


Music Hath Charms

by Dawnwind



Category: Invisible Man (TV 2000)
Genre: Gen, h/c
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-03
Updated: 2011-06-03
Packaged: 2017-10-20 01:43:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 49,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/207458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of Darien's old friends from prison is now a major rock star, and someone may be trying to kill the newest media sensation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Music Hath Charms

Music hath Charms

By

Dawnwind

 _Everyone's heard of the old saying by William Congrove, "Music hath charms to sooth a savage breast…" although most people misquote Congrove and say 'savage beast', and personally I'm not sure which I like better. Both have an element of truth…._

I once knew a guy who stole a guitar.

Not just any guitar, he stole Jimmy Buffett's ax from the San Diego branch of the Hard Rock Café. I'd always had him pegged as a mediocre thief, but he pulled that one off with panache. It was in all the papers--even Variety--and featured on Entertainment Tonight's whodunit segment. He was never caught, and eventually the fickle attention of the public moved on to some other celebrity's disaster. One year after the robbery, Jimmy Buffett was quoted as saying he was still broken up about it, but how upset could the man be? He lives in paradise on a Caribbean island and has millions.

The point I'm making is that Miles wasn't much of a thief, but, man, he could play. He even made the battered old Gibson in cellblock D at Soledad sing like B.B. King's Lucille.

So, I wasn't surprised when I ran into him a few years after our joint incarceration playing at a grunge club in La Jolla. He wasn't the headliner that night, but he was the crowd pleaser, and after his set, we shared a couple of beers. That was when he told me about the Hard Rock Café heist. Apparently the guitar just caught his eye while he was downing a burger and he just had to have it. Personally, if I had to choose between all the rock and roll paraphernalia hanging on the walls there, I'd have gone for something with some history, like the Big Bopper's mike, but that's just me. I was impressed that he'd robbed such a famous place, but we haven't kept in touch, and I haven't seen ol' Miles since.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century, spring of 2002, and I was avoiding the latest in the never-ending series of blood tests Claire likes to inflict on me by parking it at Starbucks for a double mocha espresso and a bagel. Nothing like a good breakfast to get you going in the morning. I could pretend I forgot that Claire had stressed it was supposed to be a _fasting_ blood level to check for things like insulin and cholesterol levels.

Why does she need to know that stuff anyway? The only levels I was worried about were the levels of Quicksilver in my blood, and ever since Arnaud's nifty suicide gene took away the madness, I haven't even thought much about QS levels, to be honest.

Back to the subject of Miles. I was munching my bagel and schmear when the clique of high school seniors to my left dashed off with much squealing about being late for Mr. Seymour's class, abandoning their cups with the dregs of low fat double lattes. I sent Mr. Seymour some sympathetic vibes 'cuz those girls looked like jailbait with their hip-hugger silver tab Levis and belly button rings. Once the dust had settled, I spotted a crumpled copy of Entertainment magazine amongst the girls' pile of napkins and nibbled plain bagels. Guess the hunk of their week wasn't Grandpa Sean Connery who was featured on the cover looking really happy because he won some lifetime achievement award thing.

One of the red highlighted headlines plastered over Sean's silver pate proclaimed Miles Verbage the newest threat to Ricky Martin.

How many Miles Verbages could there be? And was he really living _La Vida Loca_?

More than a little intrigued, I opened the magazine to page 69 and found myself staring into the wide blue eyes of Miles Verbage, my former prison mate. Success had been good to Miles. He was flashing capped teeth, which covered the gap I knew was there from when he was popped in the jaw in 1990 by another inmate, and a decent haircut to tame his wild mane of surfer blond hair.

I'd never thought much about it before, but Miles was a good looking guy, if you ignored his broken-too-many-times nose, and in a silver lame tee and black leather sprayed-on pants, he sure looked like a rocker. It wasn't Jimmy Buffett's guitar he was strumming in the photo, but a handmade one-of-a-kind deal like all the big rock stars used. Obviously while I was doing my invisible man schick, Miles had been making the scene in a major way.

"There you are." Hobbes was standing so close behind me his breath tickled my ear and ruffled my hair.

I immediately put a hand up to reassure myself he hadn't blown any strands into disarray.

"Claire sent me to find you," he said, snitching the last quarter of my bagel and stuffing it into his mouth.

"And you did," I replied, shoving the magazine into the pocket of my black leather jacket.

"She wants you in the keep, pronto, and I wouldn't mess with her this morning if I were you. She's PMSing."

"PMSing?"

"You know, the way women get when it's their time."

"You make it sound like she has a terminal disease. You know for sure she's on the rag?"

"Bobby Hobbes does not ask questions of a personal nature, pal." He made a sweeping negative slash with his arm.

"Since when?"

"All I'm sayin' is she's cranky in a major way, and I, for one, am stayin' out of her way."

"Good. If that's the case, does it mean that I can stay out of your way when you forget to take your Lithium? Cause cranky doesn't begin to describe that…"

"Hey, just cause you got your sanity intact now, don't diss other people who still have to work at it."

"I'm not dissing you, Hobbesy," I said affectionately, following him down the street to the Harding building.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"There you are," Claire stated, echoing Bobby's words, when I sauntered into her lair. She did seem a trifle cranky and more than a little annoyed at me. Did she really expect me to wake up all bright and perky and rush on in to get poked and depleted of even more blood?

"We're late as it is. I've got more than enough to do this today without waiting around all bloody morning for you to show up," Claire snarled at me with her arms crossed sternly over her chest. She was cranky.

"He ate breakfast," Hobbes tattled with a straight face.

"Darien! Bloody hell." Claire slammed her fist down on a tray, sending rubber tourniquets and collection vials flying. "Can't you ever take my work seriously? Really, I'm not sure why I even bother to try and keep you healthy."

Okay, now she was making me feel a little guilty. After all, she did keep me relatively healthy and she'd synthesized the suicide gene from Arnaud's notes. She also made counteragent for two years, which, even though I hadn't liked getting weekly, sometimes daily injections, had succeeded in mostly maintaining my sanity. So, I felt a lot guilty, at that.

"Sorry, Claire, I forgot, okay?" I lied. "I won't eat another thing all day and you can stick me this afternoon, or tomorrow morning or whenev…"

"What if I don't want to?" Claire bit off each word with sharp snaps of her teeth, a growl low in her throat. "Did you ever think I might not enjoy sticking you?"

No, I hadn't. She always seemed to take such joy in gruesome tasks like drawing blood, scraping skin cells for bacteria and analyzing Quicksilver data. I figured it was her life's work.

"For your information, Mr. Invisible Fawkes." Claire flipped her hair over one shoulder and gathered up her purse, leaving the tray of needles and specimen vials scattered like leftovers from a hospital scene on ER. "I have other things planned for my afternoon, thank you very much, and since you've bollixed up my morning, I'll just take my leave now."

"Honey," Hobbes asked in a very small voice, "Where are you going?"

"You know very well I've got tickets to Miles Verbage's concert tonight, Bobby," Claire answered haughtily, her English accent thick as marmalade on a crumpet in her anger."Since you declared him loud and infantile…"

"I never said that!" Bobby insisted.

Claire ignored him in her tirade. "I called my old chum from Cal Tech, who lives in Del Mar, and she's mad for Miles, so we're going alone!" With a glare at the both of us, she started towards the door.

"I said he was loud and idiotic," Bobby clarified to no one in particular.

"If you're going to Miles' concert." I whipped the Entertainment magazine out of my pocket, still opened to the article entitled _'Mighty Miles makes Millions!'_ and held if out like a white flag. "You might like to get this signed?"

"Oh, lovely!" Claire's whole demeanor morphed from avenging biker chick to giggly schoolgirl. "My newsstand was out of that issue."

"Keep it," I urged, since I hadn't paid for it anyway. "I…know him."

"You don't," Hobbes scoffed, glancing at the full page picture of Miles rocking out.

"Do so, and you'll never guess from where."

"Prison?" Claire piped up, pouring over the text of the article.

"How'd you know?"

"He makes no secret that he's had a colorful past," she informed me. "I have both his CD's and watched him on Jay Leno just this past week."

"You really know him?" Hobbes still sounded skeptical

"Yes. Why is that so hard for you to believe?" I glowered at him.

"I have an idea." Claire looked coquettishly at Hobbes. They'd been a couple for some time now, but she rarely demonstrated that fact in the work place. "Maybe you and Darien could get tickets to the concert, too, and I could sit with you and Darien could sit with Melissa, then afterwards…"

"You want to meet Miles." I grinned. "I'll bet I can arrange something."

"What about you wanting to go just chicks?" Hobbes questioned like a Neanderthal.

"This will be more fun." She winked at him, silently promising stuff I probably shouldn't know about. I wasn't really sure I wanted to be paired up on a blind date, however. It had been eons since that had happened, and they never turned out well.

The concert was nearly sold out, but there was still some seats left in the nosebleed section, which Bobby grumpily paid for. We met the ladies at a nice little Moroccan place for an early dinner beforehand. Lots of lamb and couscous to stuff in my face so all I had to do was smile at Melissa, without engaging in any embarrassing conversation.

I'd been dreading meeting her the whole day, envisioning some old maid chick with stringy hair and a distracted air. She had to be smart to have been at school with Claire, and I don't know why I imagined her plain, since I know quite well that smart girls don't have to look like Miss Jane. Look at Claire. Stereotypes raising their ugly heads again. They were about the only thing at the table that were ugly, cause Melissa Beatten sure wasn't.

She had light brown hair cut in a slightly too severe bob for her heart shaped face and sweet brown eyes. Her figure was certainly decent, and I probably would have looked twice if she'd been walking down the street, but it was her language that stopped me cold. No, she didn't swear all the time. That, I could have handled. She was the kind of person who assumed the world was either hopelessly stupid or able to keep up with her Einsteinian brain. She prattled on about Quantum physics and some guy named Feynman like we all knew who he was and he'd show up at the table for some thick Moroccan coffee and after dinner almonds in just a minute.

Claire finally put in that the guy had died and Cal Tech was naming a physics lab in his honor. Melissa didn't have a clue that the rest of us weren't keeping up--well, that is except Claire, who's the smartest and most down to earth person I've ever met. Claire kept up her end of the conversation. Bobby and I just ate.

Just as Claire's whole attitude had changed that morning when I'd given her the magazine, Melissa transformed into a simpering teenager with a crush on her favorite rock star. Now instead of Feynman, it was Miles this and Miles that. She hung on my arm like I was going to disappear, which I seriously considered doing, like she was afraid that if she let me out of her sight, she'd lose her one big chance to meet Miles Verbage. Even the fact that Bobby and Claire got the nicer seats, and we had to sit up with about a thousand screaming teenyboppers in the nose bleed section didn't stifle Melissa's ardor. She was going to meet Miles.

The opening act was some 'N Sync clones with annoyingly sappy lyrics and dance steps they'd obviously practiced in a really small garage, because they kept bumping into one another instead of using up the entire stage. The teenyboppers around us just mooned over the blond haired one, named Dale, and argued about who was smarter, Vern or Chapel, pronounced Cha-pelle, which sounded like a girl's name to me. There was no doubt that Chapel was a guy, even at this distance, his manly bulges were showing through the tiny jogging shorts he had on.

After an interminable set, Miles Verbage was announced, his name reverberating around the arena the way the announcer's voices do at a wrestling match.

Miles erupted onto the stage with over-the-top pyrotechnics and strobing light effects. The girls let out ear piercing shrieks, and Melissa clutched my forearm with enough strength to leave finger sized bruises.

The guy could still sing. I'm no judge, and I was on the way to a moderately severe hearing loss with the teenyboppers screaming in my ear, but what I did hear sounded major league to me. Miles played his own guitar, and didn't rely heavily on synthetic sound effects to enhance his voice. He had the audience in the palm of his beringed hands by the end of the first song, and kept them there for the rest of the set. Between songs he joked with the band, teased the lucky chicks in the front row and made self-depreciating remarks about the flashy clothes rock stars have to wear. Even if I hadn't already known he was an okay guy, I woulda liked him. He was just nice, in a real, honest way. And I say that with a completely straight face, since when I knew Mighty Miles, there had been nothing remotely honest about him.

When Verbage was singing his last number, a weeper about some poor schmuck whose fiancée dies on their wedding night, I gestured to Melissa that I was leaving. We'd already agreed that she would rendezvous with Hobbes and Claire at the backstage door after the concert, by which time I should have gotten them all passes to the star's dressing room.

This was one of the few fun 'assignments' I'd ever had as the invisible man, sneaking my friends in backstage. I went see-through in the stairwell outside the main floor of the auditorium and just strolled down the aisle to the stage, climbed up and stood off to one side of the drummer, watching the show. The audience wouldn't stop clapping after the last song, demanding encores, most shouting "'Sandstorm'!" I wasn't real knowledgeable about his repertoire but even I recognized the number one hit on the top forty. Funny that I'd never connected it with my old prison buddy before. 'Sandstorm' was a hard song to ignore lately. It musta gone double platinum, cause I'd heard it on the radio half a dozen times this week alone.

Just as Miles launched into the lyrical first verse, I made my way off stage, hunting for his dressing room. It was around a corner and up a short staircase, but it had to be his--a little plaque reading 'M.Verbage' was stuck up on the door. Roadies and backstage techs were all roaming around doing whatever their jobs entailed so I had to wait for a moment when the hall was empty to take a peak inside the door. Just as I was about to turn the doorknob, it turned by itself. Someone was inside!

I jumped back, concealing myself behind a pile of equipment, letting the Quicksilver flake off.

A girl came out, cocking one ear to listen for the end of the music. Miles' last words had been completely drowned out by the cheers and clapping of his fans, but the song was over and he was thanking them, saying goodnight. The girl smiled to herself, obviously waiting for Miles to return.

She was everything I'd ever wanted waiting for me. Dark and exotic, she evoked visions of black eyes flashing over the edge of a transparent veil. Even dressed in the modern uniform of youth, a tee-shirt and jeans, I could still see her in a burka, standing under a palm tree in an oasis, hot dry sand blowing off the Sahara behind her. The scene would be scored with that haunting song by Sting, 'Desert Rose', with the Arabic chorus behind his distinctive voice. She looked like the desert, brown and pure, a rare blooming flower amongst the rest of us weeds. Stunning without a bit of artifice, she smiled in delight when Miles came pelting backstage, dripping with sweat, and I felt like the interloper that I was when they kissed.

Waiting just long enough for them to reconnect, I made like I'd just been coming down the hall and spotted them, calling out, "Miles?"

He looked up, startled, staring at me for several seconds before his blue eyes widened. "Darien Fawkes? I don't believe it, man! Come over here!" We shook hands, patting each other on the back with hearty slaps. "You see the concert?"

"Sounds even better than you did with that old six string back in Soledad," I complimented.

"How long has it been?" He shook his head, giving the girl a squeeze. "Farzimah, this is an old buddy, Darien Fawkes. Fawkes, my fiancée, Farzimah Abdullah."

"You're a lucky man." I shook her hand, her jet black eyes regarding me shyly, but she barely spoke more than a tiny hi.

"You alone?" Miles asked, waving away his roadies, who looked surprised to see an unauthorized person backstage. I didn't even have one of those nifty lanyard badges everybody wore these days. All the roadies had ones emblazoned with 'Sandstorm tour '02' and a picture of Miles clutching his guitar like it was the last oar on the Titanic's lifeboat.

"No, man, in fact I was wondering if you could say hi to a couple of friends of mine? Sign a magazine for Claire?"

"Claire, huh? No problem." Miles grinned. What can I say, he's nice. "Bring 'em on back, but I gotta get outta these clothes and take a quick shower. Give me five, Farzimah will show you where you can all wait."

He gave instructions to a beer bellied stage manager with a long skinny braid down his back like Willie Nelson, and suddenly I was the man of the hour. He took me around the maze of a backstage to the door guarded by an ex-basketball player that topped me by about four inches and several shoe sizes. Not very often that I feel short.

"Mustafa." Willie Nelson's twin darted a stubby forefinger at me. "Give Fawkes here and any of his friends passes, on the wonder kid's say so."

The wonder kid, huh? Sounded like Miles doesn't get much more respect around his workplace than I do. But from the looks of things, at least he's pulling in some big bucks.

"Sure, thing, Randy." Mustafa's voice came from about ten feet below his size fifteen basketball shoes, as deep as a canyon. He stamped a big red date over Miles' face on a temporary pass, looking up silently to ask me how many more I wanted. I just held up four fingers and he supplied three more. Mustafa and I connected, man.

Just as planned, Hobbes, Claire and Melissa were waiting at the back door, along with about every other member of San Diego's female population. When Mustafa opened the door, the sound of one hundred throats sucking in air to scream Miles' name was like a solid wall hitting me in the solar plexus. We dragged in my companions before the assault on our eardrums got any worse.

Unfortunately, after checking his clipboard a second time, Mustafa had to crack the door again to emit a harried looking PR person, a short, mustached guy with the overly modulated voice of a radio DJ and a blissed out fifteen year old girl with so much jewelry pierced through her earlobes and nostrils she must have set off metal detectors from here to the smoggy LA basin. She sure made the wand Mustafa waved over us sing, but then, so did Hobbes' Colt .45.

Randy looked very displeased to find that Hobbes was packing a piece, but nobody separates Bobby Hobbes from his firearm. After he'd presented his Agency ID and I'd wearily brought mine out for show and tell, as well, the stage manager begrudgingly let us back into the dressing room, but he looked very unhappy about it. I didn't point out that if Hobbes had really wanted to blow away the latest pop sensation, he was a good enough shot to have done it from his seat in the auditorium. No sense in increasing Randy's stress level.

The dressing room was more than just some little closet for The Star to change his clothes in, it was actually two or more rooms. Miles was presumably showering and changing in the back with the help of Farzimah.

Randy left us in a nicely appointed living area with a couch, chairs and coffee table. The latter was entirely covered with bowls of snack foods of every sort. Mighty Miles must give his roadies a hard time on the candy front. One of the bowls housed only purple and turquoise M and M's. I scooped up a handful of the controversial candies, tossing them into my mouth. I don't even think the votes were all tabulated in the International color debate the Mars company was conducting for the newest M and M color. How did Miles get a whole bowl full? Not that I voted, but purple was a good color. They all taste the same to me, anyway.

Ashley Breeana, the girl who'd won a chance to meet Miles and have dinner with him from KTIT, 115 fm on your radio dial, was completely nonplussed by the gun discussion, her blue eyes tracking Bobby's movements like he was Saddam Hussein coming in to assassinate the King of Rock and Roll. Luckily, we all know that Miles ain't the king, all though he certainly seemed like he was trying to topple the kingdom. Never gonna happen in my lifetime.

The PR woman who had the tongue twisting name of Victoria Viceroy-Wong kept a tight grip on Ashley Breeana's arm, but her silver blond hair was already losing it's puffy style. She and the DJ, Dr. Div, kept Ashley Breeana as far away from us as possible in the small room. They all huddled together underneath an enormous flower arrangement, sampling the blue tortilla chips.

"Bobby, I think you made the poor thing nervous." Claire laughed, her eyes merry.

God, if Hobbes hadn't already staked his claim, I'd go after her in a heartbeat. Melissa was pretty, but she had nothing on Claire. Besides, her eyes were riveted on the door to Miles' private room with the faith of a supplicant at Lourdes waiting for the Virgin to make a reappearance.

"Looks too young to be out this late at night--what were her parents thinking?" Hobbes griped.

"If she's anything like I was, her parents may not know a thing," I observed with a sly grin.

"Not everybody is as devious as you were, Fawkes." Hobbes elbowed me in the side, but I was saved from any further ribbing by the fortuitous arrival of Miles and his consort.

Her knees knocking together, Ashley Breeana had to be shoved forward to shake her idol's hand. She hardly seemed to be breathing and didn't say much more than a shaky, "I love you, Miles, 'Sandstorm' is my favorite song."

He bussed her chastely on the cheek, handing her autographed CDs and posed patiently for photos with her. Afterwards, Ashley Breeana just floated in his wake like a buoy in the harbor of love. Melissa wasn't much better, sounding so amazingly idiotic when she shook his hand I had to stare to make sure it was the same woman whose explanation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle of Quantum Physics had sailed over my head during the couscous course at dinner.

"And these are my two colleagues," I introduced last. "Dr. Claire Keeply and Bobby Hobbes."

"A doctor, Claire." Miles flirted, "I've got this pain in my…whachamacallit."

"I usually don't take on new patients." Claire grinned with delight to be holding the hand of a real rock star. "I could make an exception in your case."

I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing at Bobby's sour expression. He kept a firm hand on the good doctor during the entire conversation.

"Then, I'm cured." He laughed, "Completely. Bobby Hobbes? You know ol' Fawkes long?" I could tell he was fishing, trying to find out if I was still in the less than legal profession, and did Hobbes know anything about that.

"Fawkes and I work very closely together, in textiles," Hobbes lied flawlessly, since he is a trained secret agent, unlike myself. "He's been with us for a couple of years and we've nearly gotten rid of all his old larcenous habits."

"Nearly all." Miles shrugged. "I know how that is."

"Heard any good Jimmy Buffet lately, Miles?" I teased.

"Guess what, I'm taking Farzimah to the Caribbean in a few weeks." He smirked, putting an arm around her shoulder.

Farzimah was a girl of very few words, but she was obviously in love. And they made a good looking couple. His blond surfer looks contrasted perfectly with her dark exotic appeal. I wouldn't be surprised if People magazine included them in the next best looking couple issue, especially since the break up of Tom and Nicole must have left a big hole in the list.

"We're going out for a late supper with Ashley Breeana," Miles explained. "You guys want to come with? The more the merrier. We've got the whole restaurant to ourselves, anyway."

"I'd love to, thank you, Miles." Claire smiled sweetly, linking arms with Bobby. "Melissa?"

I don't know why she even bothered to ask. Melissa was so far gone by that time she would have agreed to go to a Rave and dance to Curt Cobain music. Victoria Viceroy-Wong towed Ashley Breeana along, so I took charge of Melissa. Dr. Div followed, trying to chat up Miles' PR woman, Sherida Jefferson. She was a knock-out with legs that wouldn't quit, but had a bossy, irritating personality and kept stage directing every single movement Miles made.

Since he was a Rock Star, Miles can't go anywhere without an entourage, which included Mike Kim, a short Asian guy whose job seemed to be mostly of the hand wringing and worrying persuasion, and Sherida, who sported a camera like it was permanently attached to her arm. She'd chirp, "photo op!" and film us, or importantly, Miles, every few seconds, until I had to ask why anyone would want a picture of him walking down the hall.

She explained that some teenaged girl magazine was doing a day in the life story of Miles, which included of photos every aspect of his life: his house, hotel room and dressing room. Hobbes' paranoia went on hyperalert at the information and he kept questioning Miles on the safety issues inherent in such a project until Verbage obviously could tell that we were in more than just the textile biz.

A series of limos pulled up just then, interrupting whatever Miles was going to say, since he had to pose for more candid shots of him getting in the car with Farzimah. We rated the third limo, after the one which picked up Ashley Breeana and crew.

"He shouldn't let that nozzle take all those pictures," Hobbes groused once we were all seated in the long car.

It gave me squeamish reminders of being in a police car, since there was a partition between us and the unseen driver. We didn't rate the amenities like a TV or a mini bar, either. It was just a big black car with those weird little jump seats. My legs are way too long to sit on one of those, so both women took them.

"What are you going on about, Hobbes?" I rolled my eyes in his direction,

"Security, Fawksey. He's lettin' way too many people know where he lives…"

"Half of San Diego knew where he was tonight," I reasoned. "And I'm sure that the radio station probably announced what restaurant he was taking Ashley Breeana to."

"Can't be too cautious. There are lots of crazies out there." Hobbes shook his head, running a hand over his thinning crown to smooth down the little hairs on top.

"He's just a rock star. Who'd want to come after him?"

"Does the name Mark David Chapman ring a bell?" Hobbes said with that annoying superior tone he gets. "He offed John Lennon right in front of his apartment building."

"Oh, that was such a sad day." Claire sighed.

"I'd hardly put Miles in the running with John Lennon," I scoffed.

"Verbage ain't even in the race, my friend," Bobby declared, which caused Melissa to come out of her fog and defend her idol.

"He's already gone platinum twice," she said loyally. "One for 'Wedding Belle', and the other for 'Sandstorm'. An amazing feat for one so recently in the business."

"Oh, the kid can carry a tune, and I won't even go into the deceptive practices in the music industry…" Hobbes started, obviously ready to launch into a diatribe about payola and whatever other schemes he'd heard about CD sales.

"Bobby, you said you wouldn't," Claire reminded, patting his hand.

"But only time will tell whether he has the staying power of a true legend," Hobbes finished.

"I loved the Beatles growing up." Claire smiled, humming a snatch of 'Strawberry Fields', "My mother attended one of their concerts. She said it was like being in the presence of royalty."

"Nobody's better than the King of Rock and Roll himself," Hobbes said stoutly.

"Jimi Hendrix," I suggested, just to mess with him.

"Elvis Presley." Bobby bristled. "But Lennon and the rest of the Beatles--sure, they could be the Crown Princes."

"I used to be enamored of Ricky Martin, before Miles," Melissa put in. "But 'Sandstorm' has eclipsed 'La Vida Loca'."

She really needs to get out of the lab more often and buy some different CD's. Maybe some Matchbox Twenty or Santana.

"I must confess a childhood fancy for Davy Jones." Claire grinned at Bobby. "I don't know what it is about short statured men…"

"I couldn't say," he murmured, forgetting about the rest of us, talking to her with just his eyes.

"Robert? Do you really think Miles is in danger?" Melissa asked as the limo pulled behind the other two.

We could see Sherida snapping off pictures with every step poor Miles took. I hoped he had a policy like Princess Diana had had, no photographs while he was chewing his food.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We were escorted into a fancy restaurant on the Marina that was leagues out of my price range. Of course, Burger King is the top limit on my price range. Since we were in the presence of a bonified cash cow, the maitre d' was practically bowing at our feet in his effort to please.

We did have the whole restaurant to ourselves, but then again, it was nearly midnight. Having eaten five hours ago should have satisfied me, but I was starving and tucked into the antipasto spread with gusto. Champagne was poured for everyone but Ashley Breeana, who made do with a Coke, and a good time was had by all. Sherida captured it all on film for posterity, and by the time the linguini with clams was served, even Hobbes was in a mellow mood, laughing privately with Claire at a corner table.

The couples had paired off quickly after all the chairs at Miles' table had been claimed, leaving me kind of odd man out, since my date had joined Ashley Breeana, Ms. Viceroy-Wong and Farzimah at the table of honor. I was stuck with Dr. Div, still trying to make time with Sherida, who wasn't giving him the time of day.

Miles gave me a 'what can I do, have to please the fans' grin and went back to making small talk with the women surrounding him. The little Asian guy, who turned out to be Miles' business manager, just hovered, directing Sherida's camera angles and making a nuisance of himself.

Circulating waiters were bringing out more wine, topping off my glass before I'd ever finished the last, or just setting down a fresh one with a different vintage beside the others. I really didn't know how much alcohol I'd had. You'd think after I faked my way around Paris as a wine taster that I'd know the difference between Californian and imported wines, but it all tastes like fermented grape juice to me. And, without a doubt, very expensive grape juice at that.

So, by the time I was on the third course, and umpteenth glass of vino, I wasn't exactly paying attention to the comings and goings of the wait staff. There seemed like an inordinate number of them to me, but maybe they all wanted a chance to wait on Miles Verbage, how was I to know?

I stood up to stretch my legs, leaning over to comment on what Miles was chatting about to Melissa. Everybody was laughing and having a great time, even Miss Quantum Physics. I guess we weren't a match made in heaven after all. Farzimah seemed to take all the adulation of Miles in stride, sitting prettily on his left without a trace of jealousy. She knew who had his heart, and I had a feeling that they'd be together for a long time.

The busboy, clearing away plates, jostled one of the wine servers, who swore violently, jerking out of the busboy's way. That was the only sense of something out of order before bullets were spraying the room.

With a mighty shove, I pushed Miles and Farzimah under the table, trying to duck bullets by shear willpower. Ms. Viceroy-Wong had similarly pulled a shrieking Ashley Breeana to safety. Behind me, I could already hear the retorts from an entirely different gun, one I'd recognize in my sleep--Bobby Hobbes'. Guess I was starting to get the hang of weaponry after all.

My heart rate was galloping like a horse straining to win the Preakness and it was all I could do to maintain my visible form. I could feel the Quicksilver starting to flow and took quick panting breaths to try and calm down. Would not help my supposedly top secret status to go invisible in a room full of witnesses, one of whom was a camera bug.

A white-hot pain slammed in my skull, and for a moment I wondered if I was going Quicksilver Mad, before I remembered that couldn't happen anymore. I ducked another hail of bullets, going down under the edge of the tablecloth to find myself next to Melissa. Even in my present more than half drunk state, I could tell she was dead.

Things got pretty confusing there for a while, but the gist of it was an Arab guy with one of those common names like Mohammed, had tried to kill Miles. When the busboy had bumped into him, he'd lost his aim, hitting Melissa Beatten instead, sitting to Miles' right. Nobody else was seriously injured, thank God.

I was more than a little surprised when Claire gaped at me in astonishment and tried to pull me down into a chair so she could examine my head. I'd been trying to cover Melissa up with a tablecloth while simultaneously comforting Ashley Breeana who was still screaming. Strangely enough, I could barely hear her, although I knew she must be loud.

Hobbes was manning the troops, organizing the security guards who'd been on the outside of the restaurant, watching for a perimeter breach. Always worse when the danger comes from the inside. They had the gunman surrounded completely, but he was screaming obscenities in whatever language he spoke, and pressing a hand over his bleeding shoulder wound. Bobby had winged him, but like a good agent, left him alive to be questioned.

Everyone else was huddled into little groups, either in shock or trying to help out. Miles had both arms around Farzimah like he was never going to let her go. She was cuddled against his shoulder, her black eyes rimmed with red. Ms. Viceroy-Wong looked catatonic, swaying. Mike Kim came rushing in from the outside like he hadn't a clue what had just happened. I've never even noticed he'd left the room.

"Claire, Ashley Breeana needs help…" I said inanely, patting the poor little girl's arm, which didn't seem to be very effective. Besides, my voice sounded like it was on the lowest volume setting.

"Darien, you've been shot!" Claire shouted at me.

That I heard. Once Claire pointed it out, I realized I was bleeding like a stuck pig. Just the sight of my blood on the napkin she dabbed to my head wound made me woozy.

Through a bleary haze, I watched Hobbes jerk Mohammed to his feet and drag him along to some police who'd materialized at the door of the restaurant. The little Asian manager was back in everybody's way, trying to get control of the situation, his voice high pitched and agitated. My hearing was still fading in and out like an old radio. I'd hear snatches of conversation but lose key words here and there, so it took me a minute to understand what Claire was telling me.

"You were standing so closely in front of the gunman, one of the bullets grazed above your ear," she explained, looking professional, but her face was wiped of color. "Your hearing should improve in the next few hours."

"Melissa's dead." I kept looking over at the tablecloth draped body, my belly wanting to expel all the good food and drink I'd just consumed.

"I know." Claire nodded, her lower lip trembling, but she was a consummate professional, she didn't break down in public.

We were stuck in that restaurant for hours while the police investigated the crime, interviewing every one involved and carting away Melissa's body. Even after she had been taken away, her presence still lingered, the gruesome outline on the floor a vivid reminder of what had happened. Bobby wanted to go with the police to question Mohammed, since he'd been the one to capture him, but they apparently weren't in a sharing mood, and hauled the gunman off to jail.

Finally, Ashley Breeana's parents were allowed to take the poor girl home. She'd worn herself out with all the screaming and fallen asleep with her head pillowed on Miles' jacket by the time her father came to collect her. That was some sort of a signal for the rest of us to start leaving, only a phalanx of press had surrounded the building, making escape without police escort nearly impossible. While the detectives were trying to round up some patrol officers for that duty, Miles walked over to us, his face grave. To tell the truth, I really had never gotten to talk to him the whole evening. I began to wonder exactly who this guy was. Despite Hobbes' whole paranoia about fans coming after rock stars, Miles wasn't all that big. Would some crazy really try to shoot him just for the publicity? And why a presumably Muslim man? Wouldn't it make more sense--what little sense there could be in a case like this--for it to be a woman? Like the fan club president who'd killed that Latin singer, I forget her name. None of this made any sense at all, and thinking about it was just adding to the already splitting headache I was suffering from.

"Hobbes, Darien, can I talk to you guys in private?" Miles asked.

I glanced around, there were still upwards of twenty people in the room. Private was kinda out of the question.

"Maybe we can take it into the restaurant manager's office," Hobbes suggested as if he knew what Miles had in mind.

"Excellent," Miles agreed with a shake of his blond mane. We closeted ourselves in the tiny office, away from the mob scene in the front room. I was still having some trouble following conversation, but true to Claire's word, the volume control had adjusted itself and my hearing had improved vastly in just a few hours.

"Geeze, I gotta thank you guys for the amazing job you did out there," Miles started, glancing down at his hands. He had fine tremors in both and clenched them together. "Man, D., I'm so sorry about Melissa. She was a smart lady. I'm gonna do everything I can to give her a good send-off. But without you two, we'd all have been road kill out there."

"The guy was spraying bullets around like a maniac," Hobbes said. "But it looked like he was aiming for you. Melissa was standing right next to you."

"What was his motive?" I asked, mostly rhetorically, because I really didn't expect an answer.

"That's why I need to talk to you two," Miles sighed. "You're not in textiles, are you? You're…I dunno know, Private eyes, police? Something like that, but how Fawkes got a job like that with his record…"

"Hey, just because I don't go blurtin' my prison time to all the gossip rags," I retorted.

"We're with the government," Hobbes said shortly.

"Spies?" Miles asked in surprise, his blond eyebrows disappearing up under his bangs.

"Agents," I corrected.

"When I saw how fast you guys reacted…" Verbage trailed off, still obviously in shock from the shooting. "Darien, you saved Farzimah's life, pushing us down like that. I'm in your debt, man."

"Tell us all you know about the gunman," Hobbes answered. We'd all been questioned by the police, but apparently Hobbesy felt Miles hadn't revealed all.

"I think…" Miles stopped for a moment, "The gunman wasn't after me, but really aiming for Farzimah."

Okay, to me that made even less sense than some whacked-out fan going after Verbage.

"She's a member of the Kharistan royal family, isn't she?" Hobbes commented, his voice deadly serious.

"How do you know this stuff?" I demanded, but I'd spoken too quickly and too loudly. My whole head protested by doubling the pain ratio. Staggering back, I located a chair and sank into it, closing my eyes just to get a measure of control back.

"Darien?" Miles sounded far away and very concerned.

"Fawkes?" Hobbes, my watchdog, as usual sounded close to panic, which was kind of funny after everything else that had happened that night.

"I'm okay, I'm fine," I lied, slitting my eyes open. Some major narcotics would help a lot, but that would have wait until later. "Just got the mother of all headaches."

"You were shot…" Miles was all apology. "They should'a let you go to the hospital."

"Claire took care of it." I smiled through the guns of Naverone reverberating in my head. "Farzimah is royalty?"

"Uh, yes--Hobbes, you got it in one. How DID you know?"

"I read a lot. Watch CNN," he deadpanned. "Got to keep up with foreign affairs."

"I'll bet," I said out of the side of my mouth. Hobbes used to travel the world in the CIA. He'd probably had several foreign affairs.

"Quiet, Fawkes," he snapped.

"Farzimah's brother, Amahl, is the crown prince of Kharistan," Miles explained. "He's also getting his masters in advanced engineering at University of California San Diego. That's where I met him. Only a year and a half ago I was still an unknown, playing college campuses and being put up in a spare room in the dorms. Amahl was next door to me and we got to talking. Most of his family is here in California, and they're very westernized, so eventually I met Farzimah. The rest is history."

"But why would anyone want to kill her?" I asked stupidly. That's what I'm usually there for, to ask the stupid questions.

"Factions in their country do not want Amahl in power," Miles said very softly.

"They may be trying to get to him through her."

"Has anything happened before?" Hobbes asked.

"Only things that seem stand out after the fact." Verbage shrugged. "Farzimah's car was broken into, so was my dressing room. Strange flower arrangements were delivered backstage…"

"Strange how?" I queried.

"They were funeral arrangements. One had a large black banner over the front that said 'In memoriam'."

"Who knows about all this?" Hobbes got straight to the point.

"Only you two. Well, Mike Kim knows about Farzimah's car, cause he had to go pick her up, and Randy was there when my dressing room was broken into--he discovered it. Lots of people saw the flowers before we tossed 'em out." Miles twisted his hands in his lap as if he wanted to wrestle with something large. "All the rest, we keep it really under the radar about Farzimah's family. The less publicity about that the better, and so far, most of the magazines have only focused on me and taken our cover story about her at face value."

"That is?"

"She's a pre-med student, which is true, from a Muslim family living in the US." He grinned suddenly, looking over at me. "Easiest to remember a lie that's mostly the truth, huh, Darien?"

In more ways than one, I wondered if I should tell him any part of the truth about how I got this job. "What do you want us to do for you, Miles?"

"I want to hire you as Farzimah's bodyguards."

"Doesn't she already have some?" Hobbes pointed out. "Those two goons who followed us in an unmarked blue Ford. One stood outside the restaurant, the other one was in the kitchen."

 _I'd never noticed them._ Shows you why Bobby Hobbes is the trained, senior agent around here.

"I'm not sure I trust either of them anymore." Miles pursed his lips. "But it would look suspicious to get rid of them after all this, so I want it to look like you're guarding me."

"The ol' bait and switch." I'd laugh, but my head hurt too much.

"The ol' bait and switch," Hobbes echoed. "Do you have any idea who exactly is out to get Amahl? Names? Who'd this anti-royalty faction in Kharistan?"

"I'm not sure, I've just heard Amahl talking about them. Ask that man, Mohammed, he must be working for them!" he said with agitation, raking his fingers through his hair, so it stood on end almost as wildly as mine did.

"The cops here weren't impressed by my badge," Hobbes growled. "But the Fat, uh, our boss, can cut through some red tape, and hopefully I'll get to interrogate him in the morning."

"I can't thank you guys enough. I don't know what I'd do if they'd shot…" Miles had tears in his eyes, probably imagining Farzimah under that tablecloth instead of Melissa.

I had to blink back some wetness in my eyes too, but that was probably because I had such a headache.

"Call me in the morning." He wrote a phone number and address on the back of one of the restaurant's cards and handed it to Hobbes. "I really want you two to come work with me, get to the bottom of this…"

"Before anyone else gets killed," Hobbes sounded fatalistic.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

By late the next morning, I probably could have handled that fasting sugar test Claire had wanted the day before. Bobby had dropped me off at my apartment at six thirty, just as the sun was coming up, and I was literally swaying on my feet by the time I'd made it to bed. Went to sleep fully dressed, only to wake up at ten thirty when a siren went screaming by outside my window. Even though it's been a couple of years since I was arrested, my heart rate still can't handle the scream of a police car in full pursuit mode. I had to shake Quicksilver off my arms as I came to full consciousness.

 _Oh, geeze,_ my head.

And my stomach.

Everything hurt, and my stomach had decided on a no food policy in the foreseeable future. Getting cautiously out of bed to creep over to the bathroom, I was kind of frightened by the man who stared back at me in the medicine cabinet mirror. He looked a little like me, but with a bandage over the left ear and gruesome bruising that extended beyond the gauze and around my eye. Not exactly the man-about-town image I usually liked to maintain. After finishing my business in the bathroom, I had to locate my discarded leather jacket for the bottle of painkillers Claire had pressed into my hand just before we'd parted company.

She'd insisted on taking me back to the Keep for a more thorough examination of my head after we'd left the restaurant. The usual blood letting, plus a bandage and prescription were the price I had to pay before she'd let me go home to sleep. None of us were doing very well by six a.m., but Claire made Bobby promise to take me home and pick me up at noon for a return trip to the Agency.

I had to coax some tea and dry toast into my stomach before it would tolerate the painkillers. After taking them with a glass of water and sitting really still watching 'The View' ladies interview Drew Barrymore, who really grew up looking pretty hot after being a little rugrat in 'E.T', I began to feel like a human being again. While Star Jones chatted up a guy who was suing some airline for making their seats too narrow for the horizontally challenged, I took a shower. Idly I wondered if I could sue an airline for being unfair to those of us with long legs. Worth a shot, I suppose. Maybe I'd get to be on 'The View', too.

The midmorning news followed, a perky Asian girl in a lime green sweater-set looked grave as she described the scene at Delmonico's the night before. Footage taken when Miles and Farzimah had exited was featured prominently, and a sound bite of the Mr. Up-and-Coming-Rock-and-Roll saying how lucky they were to be alive was the extent of the coverage, although the fact that the gunman was a man of some Arab descent was mentioned. In this post September 11th climate, that was big news and there was bound to be wild speculation in the newspaper as to whether Bin Laden or any of his co-horts were behind this. Probably not, in my opinion. I was more likely to wager on the explanation that Miles had given, some anti-western faction in Kharistan wasn't too keen on having Farzimah's brother in power. At least I hoped that was the explanation.

Just as the weatherman finished giving the projected temperatures for the rest of the week, Hobbes knocked on the door.

"Coming!" I called a trifle too loudly for my still aching head, in case he got worried I'd died or something, and tried to break down the door.

"Hey!" Hobbes greeted, flicking a finger at my 'Sandstorm Tour '02' tee. "Where'd you get the shirt, and how come I didn't get one?"

"Guess I got more friends in high places," I snickered. In actuality, Sherida Jefferson had given me several right before we'd left the restaurant. I silently handed Hobbes' his, keeping one for Claire.

"More like low ones," Hobbes chuckled, nodding his thanks. "But that Miles rates way above every one of your friends I've ever met."

"And how many is that?"

"Well, for one, that nozzle who framed you for the job he pulled. Oh, and your fans in Cabrillo prison. Then there's Liz…."

"Okay, I know how you feel about her." I was surprised to realize Hobbes had met several of my old acquaintances. I'd met relatively few of his.

"How's your head?" He asked, wincing at the sight of my Technicolor face.

"Claire said I'm either the luckiest or unluckiest person on the planet, she hasn't made up her mind yet." I shrugged. "How's yours? Got a hangover?"

"That red wine gets me every time." He grimaced. "C'mon, Lucky, back to the Keep with you." He cocked his head a moment as if listening to internal music. "Isn't there a Brittany Spears song by that name?"

"Yeah, except that Lucky's a girl." I pulled my apartment door closed behind me, locking both locks for Hobbes' benefit. I figure, thieves are gonna get in if they want to, why make it harder for them than it already is? For me, a couple of locks just made it more of a challenge. My apartment's been broken into before, it'll happen again. I'm getting used to it.

"Hey, Luke and Laura on 'General Hospital' got a son named Lucky."

"On a soap opera, he needs all the luck he can get. They're always gettin' shot, hit on the head, kidnapped…"

"It's really unbelievable," Hobbes agreed. "You remember that Ice Princess story back in the '80's? With super spy Scorpio? I kinda liked that guy."

"Hobbes, I was like--twelve. I didn't watch soaps then, but my Aunt Celia did. I do remember Scorpio, but I liked his wife Anna DeVane better."

"But you weren't really watchin', huh?'" He unlocked the van's doors and we both climbed in. "She was a babe, and that British accent."

"You really get off on those British girls," I teased. "I gotta tell Claire you go for Finola Hughes."

"Is that her name?"

"Far as I'm aware."

"Cause I saw her on All My Children th'other day."

"Bobby, when do you have time to watch soaps?"

"When you were off getting your hair styled at the beauty shop." Hobbes took a left which pointed us in the direction of the Agency.

"It wasn't a beauty shop, it was a hair emporium."

"Is there a difference?"

"Yes, Einstein, there is."

"Then I stand corrected," Hobbes said in a totally unconvincing voice.

After Claire reassured herself that I was still among the living and I hadn't succumbed to some virulent, rare strain of bacterial infection in the wound, she finally let Bobby and me go on up to the Official's office for a debriefing. A slightly cock-eyed one, since the 'Fish didn't know as much about the situation as we did.

"He asked us to be the Princess' bodyguards," Bobby concluded with the tale of last night's activities at Delmonico's.

I was content to let Bobby have the floor since I wasn't feeling like I had both oars in the water, if you know what I mean. Those painkillers would make a good profit on the street. They left me aware but really disconnected in a very happy, perky way. I had to ask Claire what kind they were, cause morphine makes me sick. These made me feel just fine.

"Did he give you a specific time limit?" Charlie Borden asked

"I figure he expects us to catch the bastard behind the assassination attempts."

"Attempts?" Eberts, the Official's official lap dog, echoed sharply.

"Yes, Eee-berts," Hobbes sneered the name.

I was getting so I had to force myself not to say it the same way. The name just lent itself to sneering. I wonder if the late Gene Siskel ever had this problem with film critic Roger Eberts. _'It was the worst movie of the entire decade, Eee-berts!'_ Okay, my mind was really wandering away from the subject at hand, and I mentally turned a corner to refocus my hearing on what Hobbes was talking about.

"…funereal floral arrangement," Bobby concluded.

"Did you get the name of the florist?" Eberts asked with interest.

"Shut up, Eberts," The Official shushed, obviously thinking he should have been the one to ask such a vital question. "Get on the trail of those flowers. Sounds like the best lead." He steepled his fingers, resting his jowls on the tips. "But first, I want to know what we could get out of this, Agent Hobbes?" he asked. The man was always looking to make a buck, or find the hidden perks.

"Improved relations with the government of Kharistan," Bobby explained. "We save the Crown Prince and Princess, the U.S. government will be lookin' pretty good to the royal family after that. In this political climate that could be really important with the way things are in Pakistan and all those countries out that direction."

"India," I put in to show I'd been watching the news. Frankly, I didn't watch very often. All that talk about nuclear weapons over there totally freaks me out.

"This could be a real feather in your cap with the state department." Hobbes smiled proudly.

"You don't have to lay it on so thick, Agent Hobbes," The Official said sternly. "Follow the flower trail."

"Follow the yellow brick road," I put in brilliantly.

"Follow the yellow brick road?" Hobbes teased with a question in his tone.

"There really is a wonderful wiz, if ever a wiz there was." Eberts grinned, and I swear it was the evilest grin a man with his sweet face could manage.

"You the wiz, Ebs," I agreed. "Find out what florist sent flowers to Farzimah Abdullah at Miles Verbage's dressing room."

"Right on it." He sat down at the computer terminal, his fingers flying over the keys. "On what date did this delivery occur?"

"I'll need to make a phone call." Hobbes put a hand on the receiver on the Official's desk, then pulled it back like he'd touched fire. "May I, sir?" he asked politely.

"Go ahead. Now I'm interested in this case," The Fat Man grumped. "Then when you find that address, get out of my office."

A quick phone call connected him straight to Miles himself. I guess we were really on the 'A' list now. The black draped flowers had been sent two weeks previously when Miles was playing the Hollywood Bowl up in Los Angeles, but they were the third suspicious bouquet. The first two hadn't been funeral arrangements but they were rare, expensive black roses. And all the bouquets had been received in different locales and different cities. Eberts looked momentarily floored by this because it multiplied the number of florists he had to check with exponentially. But then, with sudden insight, he tapped in the URL. It took no time at all for him to find a back door into the web site and access their mailing list.

"The credit card used to purchase the flowers belongs to a Mohammed Hassem," Eberts reported after hacking onto several different protected sites.

"That's the schlemiel we arrested last night," Hobbes growled. "He's probably just a henchman, not the one in charge. Any chance we can get a crack at him, sir?" He addressed the Fat Man. "Or at the very least, a copy of his statement."

"Get on it, Eberts," The Official ordered, but as usual Eberts was way ahead of him, talking on the phone while still surfing the web. The Official looked momentarily non-plussed until he turned his grumpiness in our direction. "You two need to get over to guard that princess."

"Darien isn't going anywhere." Claire sailed in with her blue lab coat billowing out behind her.

"Claire!" I whined, but was secretly glad she'd intervened. On these drugs, I was as likely to suspect a cocker spaniel of wrongdoing as I was to recognize a real threat.

"Bobby can manage on his own for one day."

"Sure thing, no problem. You take care a' yourself, Captain Technicolor," Hobbes teased. "But you get all the standin' around tomorrow."

"Never fear, Boy Wonder."

"Boy Wonder goes with Batman, an' I ain't no boy."

"Would you prefer Rainbow Brite?" I joked in return, "If I'm Captain Technicolor…"

"My niece used to love Rainbow Brite!" Claire piped up. "She had these bands of red, orange, yellow…"

"I think we can all picture it, Doctor," Charlie Borden silenced her chatter. "Now all of you get out!"

Hobbes skedaddled pronto, leaving me standing in the hall with Claire. Since I had nothing better to do, I followed her back to the Keep and sprawled in the demented dentist's chair. I felt very disconnected, and would suddenly jerk back to real time every once in a while, but for the most part I just zoned out for a couple of hours under the watchful eye of my private physician.

"Are you hungry, Darien?" Claire's voice sounded sweet and sharp like that strange concoction Brits put on their toast in the morning, orange marmalade. My Grandma Madeline used to make it from the oranges that grew in the grove outside her house, but I never quite liked it. For some inexplicable reason, I suddenly craved some.

"Got you some orange chicken from Red Lantern." Claire waved the container under my nose, the tantalizing aroma doing more to wake me up than my alarm clock ever did. Maybe I should get one that smelled like Chinese food.

"Man, Claire." I stretched as much as possible without falling off the narrow chair, feeling fifty percent better than I had that morning. "Didn't mean to fall asleep on you there." I took the characteristic Chinese food container from her, poking at the fried chicken in orange sauce with a chopstick.

"You obviously needed it." She sat down nearby with a container of fried rice and a cup of tea. "How's your head?"

After swallowing the food in my mouth, I replied, "Lots better, but don't give me any more of what ever you gave me. Those things are like mini vacations to the uncharted territories. But you could make a tidy profit selling them as recreational hors d'oerves at a rave."

She laughed, losing the worried look she'd had when I woke up. "I shouldn't laugh about illegal drug use, but I may have to keep that as plan B if The Official doesn't increase my supply budget."

"He giving you a hard time?"

"No more than usual. You'd think now that I don't have to make counteragent every week, we'd have thousands more in the coffers, but apparently that isn’t the case."

"Which then begs the question, how come you always use such BIG honkin' needles? Wouldn't smaller ones be cheaper? Other doctors have smaller, plastic ones."

Claire was laughing so hard she nearly choked on her rice, but after taking a sip of tea she composed herself. "I told you he keeps me on a tight budget. So I have to shop at the hospital surplus store."

"There's a hospital surplus store? That's just wrong. Those needles you get must be from the Roosevelt era."

"Hmm, possibly, but they were perfect for counteragent. The syringe volume held exactly the correct dose."

"And now you've got a lot left over?" I chopsticked some rice into my mouth and savored the tangy sweetness of the crunchy chicken against the more subtle taste of the rice.

"And now I've got a lot left over." She held one up with a wicked gleam in her eye. "Just in case anyone else needs a needle in the bum."

"Claire!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Bobby apparently had a pretty boring day, from what he told me later. He hung around Mighty Miles' ocean side apartment all afternoon while Miles signed about a million 8 by 10 glossies of himself with a scrawling signature and a little heart to make the teenyboppers swoon. What with all the publicity from the shooting, they kept a low profile to avoid the reporters circling like underfed sharks. So, I wasn't quite prepared for the jam packed schedule planned when I showed up the next day. Bobby was supposed to join us later, after he'd gotten a read-through of the interrogation with Mohammed Hassem. So, for now, it was just Fawkes, front man for a rock star. Or so I liked to pretend.

In reality, the morning was spent in the recording studio, finishing up an alternative acoustic version of 'Sandstorm' with a slightly different ending that was to be a birthday present for Amahl. His upcoming birthday would mark his majority, and he was finally going back to Kharistan to be crowned king. Then, since this is the modern world, he was going to divide his time between the Middle East and San Diego for one more semester to finish his dissertation. I kinda wondered why they couldn't just postpone the whole ceremony for half a year until all his schooling was done, but apparently that wasn't protocol.

Farzimah explained the whole thing to me while we watched Miles wail from the sound booth. The sound technicians were pushing buttons and adjusting volumes, and I found the whole thing fascinating. My fingers were itching to push up some of those faders and buttons, like you always see in rock and roll movies. Sliding all the faders on the board at the same time, jacking the decibel level all the way up to eleven.

"Darien, I feel like we owe you something." Farzimah was wearing an embroidered peasant blouse with a red ribbon tied just above her breasts. The ribbon had little beads dangling off the end and she kept playing with them, swinging them back and forth instead of looking me in the eye. Even with us getting to know each other, she was still shy.

"For last night? Nah. All in a day's work for me," I boasted.

"Still, I'll bet my brother…" She broke off when the sound booth door opened, admitting Sherida Jefferson.

"Sorry I'm late, there's a truck load of reporters out front. I'm thinking of letting Rolling Stone get an exclusive with Miles. Good publicity for the tour." She was carrying several shopping bags but still had the ubiquitous camera still slung around her neck and snapped off a couple of shots of Miles singing.

"He doesn't want to talk about the shooting." Farzimah swung the red ribbon around her finger again, the gold beads clinking together as she talked. "What did you buy?"

When she and Farzimah got to chatting, I paid more attention to the recording wizards. Man, it was cool to realize that what I was hearing live would be impregnated into a CD, so that anyone else could hear it anytime later. The plan was, once the recording was presented to Amahl, that the rest of the pressing would be sold to the public with all proceeds going to a charity fund--something to do with poor girls in Kharistan who hadn't been allowed to go to school until recently.

"That's lovely, Sherida," Farzimah was saying, holding up a tiny, handblown perfume bottle, perfectly formed but only about five inches high. It was like an iridescent blue soap bubble, almost but not quite transparent. The miniature stopper was topped with a gold ball that shimmered in the overhead light.

"My sister collects perfume bottles. I saw it when I was at the mall earlier, scoping out the area they're letting us use at Virgin Records for the personal appearance later on today, and had to buy it. That's why I was a little late," Sherida explained. Just as I'd seen a whole new side to Farzimah, far chattier than the first time we'd met; the PR woman was much less stressed and friendlier than the other night. She still had the annoying habit of micro managing every situation, and taking 'candid' pictures, but I didn't find her half as irritating as the first time.

"Really beautiful," I agreed, reluctantly tearing my eyes away from the sound guys. Miles was nearly at the end of the song, we could hear him singing over the sound booth's speakers, the complex chords of the song complimenting his voice well. "Can I hold it?"

"Sure." Sherida passed the tiny thing to me. It seemed even tinier in my hand and I turned my palm to let the blue glass catch the light.

The tech directly to my left manipulated his board like a magician, watching as Miles strummed the last notes on his guitar. Just as the 'live' music began to die, the tech punched in some prerecorded tones that were to be added onto the end of 'Sandstorm'. They were weird, atonal chords that sounded, at least to my ear, vaguely Middle Eastern, and appropriate to subject matter of the song. But none of us were prepared for the smashing finale. As the last strange, eerie chord blared, the tiny bottle in my hand exploded, shattering into miniscule fragments of delicate glass.

"Oh, my God!" Sherida jumped up, her dark eyes fixated on the shards in my hand.

"I--Sherida, I didn't do anything!" I protested, wanting to drop the remains into the wastebasket. I had a few tiny cuts in my skin, but nothing else.

"He didn't move his hand," Farzimah exclaimed. "It just shattered."

"Freaky," the tech muttered, shaking his head. He played back the end of the song to make sure he'd gotten the right mix of the music, and the weird tones played through the room once again.

"Unbelievable!" Sherida had the presence of mind to snap a photo of the bottle's fragile remains, although I don't know what good that was going to do.

"What happened?" Miles barged in, his guitar still under one arm.

"Sherida's little glass bottle just spontaneously shattered." Farzimah gestured at me.

"Musta been defective," he declared, poking at the rubble in my hand. "Darien's bleeding. Zooey, get a bag to put this in and the first aid kit." That Zooey did so without a word of complaint impressed me. Obviously Miles worked with good people who didn't invoke the dreaded phrase 'not in my job description, man'.

"It's nothing," I replied, glad to pour the shards into a plastic bag. "Sorry about that, Sherida."

"Miles is right, that thing was defective." She frowned. "You didn't do anything. I'll go complain to the store after the appearance later."

"You gonna bleed every time I see you?" Miles joked, unwrapping a Band-Aid and handing it to me.

"Occupational hazard with me." I covered the largest scratch, which was barely an inch long with the Band-Aid and dabbed a Kleenex at the two smaller ones. The mild headache I'd been able to ignore due to Advil had come back strong, the wound over my ear throbbing. I couldn't say it in public, but I was just glad the sudden adrenaline spike I'd felt when the bottle exploded hadn't turned on the Quicksilver. I must have more control that I thought.

"Well, how did that track sound?" Miles got back to business. "Play the whole thing over again."

As the sound swelled out of the speakers I concentrated on the difference between this version and the one we'd heard at the concert. This one was much more intimate, just Miles on the guitar, no back up band. And although the end chords almost sent chills up my spine, they fit in with the twisty, slightly Arabic tune.

"Sounds like demons rising out of the sand." Farzimah shivered, but there was a glint of humor in her midnight eyes. "Amahl loves this creepy kind of stuff."

"Sounds great," Miles agreed. "That ones a keeper. Mike was right, those chords really add something."

"Mike?" I asked, mostly out of idle curiosity, still toying with the Band-Aid. It was patterned all over yellow and black with Tweety Bird and that big ol' cat who was always out to get the hydrocephalic bird.

"Mike Kim, my manager, thought it'd make it more personal for Amahl. He always has great suggestions. Best manager I've ever had."

"You'll need to write up something for the liner notes about the charity." Sherida was making notes in her Palm Pilot, muttering to herself. "And I talked briefly to Joe Lincoln from 'Rolling Stone'. They want to do a front page article on you."

"I am not discussing the shooting with anyone but the police," Miles declared firmly. "Did you send the flowers an' stuff to her family?"

"All taken care of."

"She had a sister in Northern California," he said to me.

"Claire told me. They're sending the body up there." It still felt inconceivable that the pretty woman I'd had dinner with was now in a funeral home. Scary.

"She was really nice," Farzimah sighed.

"C'mon, there's a spread for lunch out in the green room." Miles hooked an arm around Farzimah's waist, leading her out.

I was really beginning to like the life of a rock and roller. There was always free food, people granting your every wish and pretty girls--even if Farzimah was already taken and I wasn't sure I would survive an evening with Sherida. They were still nice to look at. If it weren't for death threats and being shot at, I could seriously consider trying my hand at being 'A STAR'.

The fact that my singing voice leaves much to be desired wasn't that big a draw back. There are plenty of rock and roll singers who can barely carry a tune. It's all in the presentation and the promotion. Miles never had a minute to himself. If he wasn't giving a phone interview, he was posing for pictures or being measured for costumes. In between times, he and Farzimah would sit close up on the couch while he pondered lyrics for a new song. He was always striving. Probably why he got out of prison before I did. That old fashioned Yankee work ethic, as my grandmother used to call it. I think it was bred out of the Fawkes family, except maybe for Kevin, but he's a whole other subject entirely.

I ate a bagel laden with sun-dried tomato and cream cheese and a lot of pita bread dipped in hummus while waiting around. Like Bobby said, there was lots of standing, and sitting and lounging. A guy can't stand all the time. Midafternoon, Sherida came back to herd us all into a limo for the Virgin records appearance.

There must have been upwards of six or seven hundred people lining the street around the mega record store. Awe struck girls and jealous looking guys were crowded into every available space. It took the limo quite a while to inch up to the front of the building, having to pass by a phalanx of media vehicles and maneuver around electronic cables and bright lights. Just like every promotion I'd ever watched on TV, when the star got out of the car, the crowd roared. Immediately, reporters from 'Entertainment Tonight' surged forward with microphones, ignoring the rest of us in the car. This gave me the opportunity to usher Farzimah into the store and out of the crush. To be truthful, it must be kind of scary to be the object of that many people's affection.

"Fawkes, this is Victor Shubert, he's security for the store," Sherida introduced me to an ex-Marine who still sported the haircut. Bobby would have been impressed. I kinda wanted to kid the guy about his famous name but could tell right away that wouldn't have gone over very big.

Almost as if on cue, since I'd been thinking about him, Hobbes showed up. "Quite a crowd you managed to collect, partner," he said wryly.

"Hobbes, man, where have you been?" I whined. I was tired and my head had started to hurt again.

"Watching the perimeter, my friend." He nodded to the ex-Marine. "How many back up you got?"

"There are extra guards posted around the store on every floor, near elevators and escalators and two police cars on each cross street," Shubert answered, very nearly saluting.

"Plus the princess' regular guards, Fawkes an' me," Hobbes counted. "Should be enough to keep things quiet."

"That's enough to occupy a small country, Hobbes," I groaned. "Let's get Farzimah out of the front, here, huh?"

She and Sherida had moved to one side during the security discussions, waiting for us to be done. Shubert pointed out where Miles was supposed to sit while signing autographs and where he could pose for pictures. In light of the assassination attempts on Farzimah, Hobbes wanted her to stay out of the public eye all together, but she had other opinions.

"Many of his fans know me," Farzimah argued. "They expect to see me at public appearances. If I stayed away it would just create fodder for the 'Chronicle' and 'National Intruder' that he and I were separated or fighting."

"So it's all publicity," Hobbes said snidely.

"Of course not, Bobby, but it's just better not to give the worst of the lot something to embellish upon." Farzimah swept her thick dark hair off her pretty face with a frustrated gesture. "I'd much rather sit at home and watch 'The Osbornes' make their public appearances, but it comes with the territory."

"Princess, he wants us to keep you safe. How're we gonna do that if you stand up nice and pretty for some sniper to take you down, there's nothing I can do."

She flushed angrily. I was seeing more layers to this girl than I'd expected. She had intelligence, guts and while shy, a certain chutzpah. "I'll make the concession of sitting behind him, out of camera range, like some good little Kharistani girl, but you need to stop calling me princess."

"Done." Hobbes grinned.

"How long have you lived in this country?" I asked, to defuse the situation somewhat. Her comment about being a good Kharistani was injected with heavy sarcasm.

"When my father died and his brother took over as regent since Amahl was only eight, it was deemed best that we should get out of the country. They were afraid my brothers would all be killed."

"How many do you have?"

"Three. Abbas died last year but it was a skiing accident and we can't prove it was murder, but that's what we think." She looked suddenly very vulnerable, and I had the urge to put my arm around her, but just then the front doors of the store burst open, emitting Miles with Mike Kim and several hangers-on running behind.

"Are we ready to rock and roll?" Miles shouted, raising his fist in a jubilant gesture. He loped over where he was supposed to sit and surveyed the preparations. A huge cardboard cutout of Mighty Miles grinning a thousand-watt smile was propped right next him, and for a moment it looked like he'd been cloned. "Can I get a bottle of water here?" he asked Sherida. "Then, let's get started!"

Once the throngs had streamed into the store, the crush of humanity was overwhelming. Just that amount of bodies increased the heat by about ten degrees and I was sweating in a matter of minutes. Miles looked cool as a cucumber, smiling while thousands of girls clicked their little cameras at him and ooed and aahed over his signature.

Farzimah stayed just to one side of the partition, her hair half covering her cheek but smiling at people who greeted her. As she'd said, many did seem to recognize her and that made the job that much harder for Bobby and me. How were we supposed to weed out the bad guys when there were so many people eager to get close up and personal?

"Hobbesy," I whispered. "I think I'll make myself scarce for a little while."

"Good thinking, gland-boy." He nodded. "See anyone who shouldn't be here?"

"Hard to say, nobody's brandishing ozis, but that's kind of passe for the in-vogue terrorist these days, so I was just planning on keepin' my eyes open."

"And outta sight." He grinned. "I'll stay here with Farzimah, maybe get my picture in 'People' magazine."

"Yeah, I can just see it--Miles Verbage signs autographs with his main lady Farzimah and an unidentified member of the entourage."

"Get out of here, Fawkes." Hobbes made shooing motions.

Fading back into the unoccupied employee's lounge, I covered myself in Quicksilver and disappeared from view. That way I could more easily walk around without attracting attention. Or so I thought. The problem was there was just too many bodies in the place for a wraith to slide through. I give off a cold aura, and lots of people noticed. I even heard one woman asking one of Shubert's minions if the air conditioning was on the blink.

Near the back of the crush, I spotted two guys who looked distinctly Arab, and I kept them in view as I circled around one side of a dump filled with Pink's new CD. The two men were talking quietly together, trying to get a glimpse of Miles, pointing to the long line of people, maybe discussing how long a wait they were committed to. It wasn't until the taller of the two shifted around a group of giggling teen-aged girls all sporting T-shirts with Miles singing his heart out to a bride and the words 'Wedding Belle' printed in glitter paint, that I realized he wasn't all that interested in Miles, but quite intent on Farzimah.

Shit. This could be it, and the amount of people in the room made it impossible for me to get back to the princess with any speed. Luckily, a well-placed icy cold hand on bare flesh causes immediate results. Girls squealed and guys swore but the bodies parted like the Red Sea, and I'd gained my objective far faster than I'd ever thought possible. There was some dissension in the ranks, but the store guards were maintaining order with threats of expulsion from the establishment if people didn't just shut up. Any other day, I might have found this kind of funny, but not today.

"Hobbes." I'd crouched behind a bank of CD's just long enough to get back my visible form. He jumped when I grabbed his upper arm, not expecting me back so soon.

"What? You see Suddam Hussein?"

"Not quite, but almost." I ducked my chin so I was talking almost directly into his left ear. "Over by the country/western section, see the two guys?"

"Gotcha. They make any actual threatening moves or you just got a gut feelin'?"

"Going with my gut on this one, man," I answered, my belly awash with churning acid. Hobbes was always urging me to follow my natural instincts and this felt right--or wrong to be exact. These guys were after Farzimah.

"Princess," Hobbes said quietly, "We need to get you out of here."

"Bobby, I asked you to stop calling…." Farzimah stood, smiling blandly as several cameras flashed, capturing her every move. "What is it?" She had the resigned expression of someone who knew she might have to do something she didn't really want to, but knew the importance of listening to advisors.

"Do you see those two guys over there?" I jerked my head vaguely in their direction. They hadn't moved much in the last minute, but when Farzimah turned to look they both perked up, staring directly at her.

"C'mon, we don't have time for this," Hobbes was saying, pulling gently on her arm.

"That's Amin!" she cried happily, waving. This created quite a stir, with nearly one hundred hands waving back at her, obscuring my view of the two men.

"Who's Amin?" Hobbes asked with narrowed eyes.

"My brother! He's with his friend Tayeb." She laughed at our expressions, her black eyes twinkling with merriment. "You thought they were some terrorists, admit it! Big bad men coming to kidnap me! "

"Princess, if you're waiting for people, you have to tell us ahead of time," Bobby growled. I could feel the frustration and unresolved tension coming off him in waves and ran a soothing hand down his stiff spine. He relaxed fractionally, clenching his hands to get out some of the stress.

"I know, sorry, I wasn't sure they'd make it. I told Mike Kim." She shrugged. "Darien, can you escort them around the barrier? Maybe we can all go get some juice later."

"Yeah, sure." I slunk around the crowd again, visible this time. Coming closer to Amin I could see the resemblance, although he was probably younger than Farzimah by a year or two. Strange how prejudism rears its ugly head at the oddest times. I'd thought myself removed from the national distrust of people with Arabian ancestry, but in one moment I'd shattered that misconception. Even though I trusted Farzimah, I'd accused the first dark eyed stranger I'd seen. I didn't like acknowledging that side of myself.

Amin turned out to be a great guy and sincerely proud of his sister's semi-famous status. We escaped the bright lights and found a back table in the food court, just Farzimah, her brother and his friend, Hobbes, me and Sherida. My ears were ringing from the noise almost as badly as the night of the shooting so I was glad to sit down and sip some of the tart, freshly squeezed lemonade from the Hotdog on a Stick booth.

"Amin's going to Berkeley," Farzimah boasted, both arms wrapped around one of his. "A real genius."

"Sis," The boy complained looking proud nonetheless. If Amahl had been eight when they'd arrived in America, this brother must have been barely out of diapers at the time. He probably had very few memories of his homeland and after only talking to a few minutes it was obvious he wasn't entirely in favor of going back there.

"What's your major?" I asked.

"Molecular biology," Amin answered, stuffing a hotdog into his mouth. He looked like he was still growing with long gangly limbs and shoulders a tad too wide for his weight. Probably end up my height when his cells finished their bodybuilding. "But I'm not sure if that's my true calling--it's a lot of fun and really easy, but I'm drawn to Astrophysics."

"The kid is smart," Bobby complimented, coming back from the cookie booth with a whole box to share with the class. Farzimah has quite the sweet tooth, I've noticed. She polished off two cookies straight away and had eaten more than her share of purple m & m's in Miles' dressing room after the concert. Maybe she was the one who wanted that particular perk in his contract.

"Straight A's all the time," Farzimah agreed.

"Like you're some big slouch." Amin laughed. "She had her pick of medical schools--Harvard…all of 'em, and stayed around here to be with Mighty Mouse."

The nickname made me laugh and I choked on a semi-sweet with nuts until crumbs were coming out my nose. "Take a breath, partner." Hobbes patted me on the back, but he was laughing, too.

"Back in Kharistan, Farzimah would have been married already," Tayeb put in, his dark eyes hostile. "We have no female doctors in our country."

 _Whoa, where did that come from?_ I took a swallow of lemonade which was now way too sour after the cookie and got my breathing under control. "How long have you lived in this country?" I asked, going for conversational so it didn't sound like I was interrogating him.

"Two years," he said. "My father believes that Western education will give me the edge to get a superior job once I return to the capital."

"Tayeb is into the boring stuff," Amin supplied, fishing raisins out of his oatmeal cookie. "Poly Sci, even though his major is electrical engineering. Wants to work for the government."

"Only boring in your mind." Farzimah laughed. She looked up when Sherida came back from where ever she had wandered off to. "Did you get a replacement?"

"They were very nice about it, even though the manager was shocked to hear how easily the bottle broke." Sherida held up a second delicate perfume bottle. This one was almost clear with a translucent pinky vein shot through and a gold ball on the stopper.

"I'll have it insured before I send it to Sheniqua though."

"Smart move," Farzimah laughed, and the subject of Tayeb was dropped for now.

But I was intrigued. Easy going, amiable Amin seemed an unlikely friend for the uptight and old world Tayeb. I wondered if he had any ties to the anti-Western factions in the Kharistani government. I found out later that Hobbes had the same questions.

We finished off the day with dinner at a sushi place where Miles had to sign several autographs before he'd eaten his first California roll, but mercifully the fans let him eat the rest of his meal in peace. Once Miles and Farzimah were locked away behind the electronically controlled gates of his ocean side home with her usual bodyguards patrolling the perimeter, Bobby and I were released for the night. I opted for a quick fast food stop since sushi isn't high on my favorites list, and the couple seaweed and rice bites I'd had hadn't filled me up.

"Bottomless pit," Hobbes teased.

"What'd you think of Tayeb?" I asked, finishing off fries and a taco by the time he'd turned the engine back on.

"He went from obscurity to near the top of my suspects list in one brief conversation." Hobbes nodded, sipping more slowly on a soda.

"Yeah, kinda strange him hanging with Amin. The kid has nice written across his forehead…"

"And you still thought he was a terrorist."

"Don't remind me. Maybe Tayeb was throwing strong vibes. I wonder if he's just a negative son of a bitch or he's getting on Amin's good side to get close to the Princess."

"Gotta find out a lot more about that Anti-Western group. Kharistan's always been one of our allies in the Middle East. I would hate to have sentiments change now." Hobbes was always impressing me with his knowledge of world affairs. I'd never even heard of the tiny country until a day ago.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next few days passed rapidly. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, but I got a big lesson in 'Life of a Rock Star 101'. Miles never quit. He was going from early in the morning 'til very late at night.

But for the life of a Royal Bodyguard, things were pretty boring. And that was okay, cause neither Bobby or I wanted anything bad to happen. The thing was, it was almost too quiet. There were no black roses delivered, no break-ins, nobody shooting at us. My bruises were beginning to fade and I was starting to get antsy. Hobbes says it's never wise to get too complacent, that's when the bomb goes off.

Since Hobbes was interested in all the political stuff, I left the research into Kharistani political machinations to Eberts and him and went back to college. Since I never really finished my degree, I figured attending a few pre-med classes with Farzimah couldn't hurt. Man, talk about boring, and incomprehensible. Didn't really understand chemistry in the least, molecular biology left me comatose and beginning anatomy was more Claire's province than mine. When the teacher hauled out a severed arm out of a vat of formaldehyde, I had to go wait in the hall.

But my education wasn't a complete wash, because while slouching against the wall waiting for the little hand to get up to the 12, I started to idly read the brightly colored flyers push-pinned to the bulletin board on the opposite wall. There were the usual announcements for school dances, tutors and free personality readings by quasi-religious groups.

 _'You too can discover your inner freedom.'_ Just attend one of our sessions and be brain washed for the rest of your college career. You ever hear of Rev. Moon?

No thanks.

I was just about to shuffle down to the intersection of the corridor where there was a Coke machine when one last flyer caught my eye. It was on really puky green paper and half-hidden by a screaming pink paper advertising low cost ski weekends for freshman. The reason I even noticed the unobtrusive sheet was the letters K-H-A and R.

A little shiver ran down my spine. Did that spell out what I thought it did?

Sure enough, when I pushed aside the florescent pink, I read the words, "Come to a rally in support of the Kharistan Freedom Fighters. Help build a brighter future for this up and coming nation."

Dollars to donuts the Kharistan Freedom Fighters opposed current government--i.e. the royal family. I bet that ol' Tayeb was a founding member.

Luckily the clock hands had completed their hourly journey and students came streaming out of the anatomy class all discussing the finer points of the tendons and ligaments in the severed arm.

"Farzimah." I latched onto her nice warm, firmly attached arm to steer her away from the crowd, her family bodyguard following a step behind. I liked to call him Mountain Man. He was maybe an inch shorter'n me but hefting probably 100 more pounds. Mountain Man never did much, just stood--solid as a mountain--and stared at anyone who came to close to his princess. Farzimah had told me on more than one occasion that he was a kitten at heart, but I sure didn't want to see the guy riled.

For some reason, he was her school bodyguard, and rotated shifts with the guys Hobbes had first seen the night of the shooting on other days. Maybe Mountain Man really liked pre-med? Who knew? He so rarely spoke, I didn't even know if he knew sufficient English to understand the professor. But then again, I've spoken English all my life and I hadn't understood the professor, so there you are.

"D'you know anything about the Kharistan Freedom fighters?" I pointed out the flyer.

"Oh, them." She wrinkled up her pretty nose, hugging her anatomy books to her--uh--anatomy. "They're springing up all over college campuses trying to incite people against my family's rule. And the Kharistani people love having a monarchy."

"Royalty's kind of gone out of fashion, even the ol'Queen of England's kind of a joke--not to sound offensive or anything…" I tried to backpedal out of the rude comment.

"No, honestly." She winked, obviously recognizing the comment for what it was, pretty much truth. "Most Kharistanis are still about a century behind. Of course, the Internet and TV just hit a few years ago, so technology is bridging the gap, but the majority of Kharistan people have voted to continue the monarchy, and welcome their new king." She sighed, leading the way to the Coke machine. I paid for two Vanilla Cokes and she handed two of her heavier books to Mountain Man so she could sip her drink. "It's a small faction, manned mostly by Westerners--and others--that want to change the government."

"To a real democracy?"

"No, that's it. With our senate and laws constructed similarly to the US, we are a modified democracy. At least that's the direction things have been going since my father died--and he was popular as a king." She shook her head in disgust. "The Freedom Fighters want a communist government."

"Not much freedom in that."

"Exactly, so they don't call it communist or even socialist, but they're just inciting violence and anger. It's getting scary."

"How well does Amin know his friend Tayeb?"

"Why? I think they met in some class and remained friends because of the mutual heritage thing."

"Cause Amin's a nice guy and Tayeb's not."

"Thank you," Farzimah said honestly.

I was surprised, but I shouldn't have been. Farzimah came off as quiet, meek and shy but when you got to know her she was funny, sharp as a tack and didn't miss a thing.

"He's always struck me as…um…a hanger on?"

"Pretty much my take, too. I just wondered if he's getting in with your family through Amin. Kind of doing the double agent schtick."

"I hope not. Amin's a decent soul but his mind's in outer space most of the time--astrophysics would be perfect for him." She laughed. "Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we hadn't come to the west. I'd be married already with a belly out to here." She outlined a phantom pregnancy. "And Amin would be shoved unwillingly into some generalship. I'm straddling two worlds and I don't like it anymore."

"You and Miles getting married?"

"We want to." She kept her voice pitched low, her black eyes flitting around the open green space of the campus, alert for guerilla reporters from the lower end of the spectrum, like the Intruder. I could just imagine our picture, arms linked as they had been up to the Coke machine, with a banner headline proclaiming me to be two timing Mighty Miles. "But we can't even move in that direction until after Amahl is crowned king and even after that," Farzimah continued. "It's all politics, Middle Eastern traditions and publicity. Not to mention that Miles would be tied forever to the Kharistan royal family. It makes planning impossible, our future in jeopardy and puts a stress on the two of us that neither of us needs."

"So you go on like nothing's changed," I finished, knowing exactly how what that felt like.

"I play the happy med student and he's 'The Star'. It was easier when he wasn't so famous."

"Well, it's said that fame is fleeting." I laughed.

"Well, can't let that happen too soon." She joined in the laughter. "He has a radio interview with Dr. Div this afternoon at two, and we're supposed to meet him there. Want to get campus lunch or go elsewhere?"

"Anywhere else," I voted. I'd already sampled the fare in the Student Union earlier in the week and wasn't ready for an encore.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"And we're back after the break. This is KTIT and I'm your fav afternoon guy Dr. Div with one of rock's newest superstars--Miles Verbage. Hi, Miles!" Div waved across the radio console at Miles who chimed in with a greeting to his fans. "Also with us in the studio is Mile's beautiful lady, Farzimah Abdullah. Miles, tell us about your newest project."

"Thanks, Dr. Div." Miles adjusted the mic so he could speak into it.

I was standing squashed into the only unused corner of the tiny studio, but fascinated with the whole process. It was the first time I'd ever been legitimately inside a radio station. I'd once burglarized the owner of a rival station across town but that was only because he'd kept his wife's jewels in the company safe. That was a night I'll never forget--easing open the safe while listening on the speaker to the DJ in the nearby studio doing the night show. He probably never knew I was in the building until the news of the theft came out the next day. That's a rush of a whole special kind.

"All proceeds of the special CD will go to buy books and other educational material for Kharistani girls. Men have been allowed higher education in the past fifty years but it's only been in the last twenty or so that women have had the opportunity, and mostly those in richer families," Miles was saying when I tuned in again.

"This must be a charity close to Farzimah's heart too, then," Div observed.

"Farzimah has certainly opened my eyes to the plight of people in her homeland," Miles agreed. "But this is a problem in many countries without the advantages of the US."

"Were you always so interested in politics?" Div questioned, making it sound like it was tantamount to being a geek.

"I have a great interest in the entire world and I applaud other rock musicians who are using their fame and influence to help others less fortunate. Bob Geldorf got knighted for his humanitarian efforts. I certainly don't aspire to be in his league, but I think if I can do something to better others while I have the ability, then I'm happy to do so."

"Even at the expense of your popularity?" Div pushed, stroking his blond mustache as if he'd made a particularly cutting remark.

"I don't follow you, Div," Miles said sharply.

Unfortunately, I did. Just before the show, Mike Kim had told Miles to stay off of any remarks about the unrest in Kharistani. That reporters were already commenting on his close ties to the royal family and how this could cause pre-sales of the CD to drop. The last thing any promoter wanted was bad publicity right before a major marketing blitz. The remix of 'Sandstorm' was due to hit stores in just over a week to coincide with Amahl's birthday celebration--an intimate dinner at a thousand bucks a plate for only one hundred of his closest friends at the ritziest hotel in San Diego.

After that, Amahl would fly back to Kharistan, and Miles would give a benefit concert the next night. Tickets were selling like proverbial hotcakes. The CD had already gone gold and it wasn't even in stores yet. Bad publicity would be just plain bad for business.

"We've had phone calls all morning from people complaining that they don't want their rock buried in sand," Div said bluntly.

Even from across the room, I could see the color flush Farzimah's face, and Miles looked about ready to explode, his hand gripping the mic way too tightly. Just at that moment, Sherida stuck her head into the booth with a slip of paper, her eyes blazing as she handed it over without a word. Div's whole demeanor changed as he read it.

"I see it's time to earn some green and run a coupla ads," Div boomed in his radio announcer voice, poking a finger down on the button that activated the commercials. "Next up, we'll hear Miles' latest song, also on the special edition of 'Sandstorm', not yet in stores. And a chance to win tickets to see Mighty Miles in person!"

"Who called?" Miles hissed when we were off the air.

"Some guys." Div waved his hands with a placating gesture. "Man, I was only trying to get your goat."

"Any names?" I asked. Like the Kharistan Freedom fighters would identify themselves on radio.

"No, but we got one on tape." Div got the attention of his engineer and requested he play back a phone call. All of a sudden, a slightly accented voice filled the studio. Except the accent wasn't what I'd been expecting. It sounded Asian.

 _"Nobody wants t'hear that Arab loving trash. Play some decent music. Miles is going down, with a bullet."_

Farzimah gasped, her face no longer red. Now it looked sallow under her normal burnished brown color.

"Far, it's just an expression," Miles assured her, taking her hand. He looked like he was going to kiss her, there in the studio, in front of Div, but the counter on the control panel showed the commercials were nearly over, and we had to act civilized again.

"We're back!" Div announced like it was some great surprise. "The new one's fantastic, Miles, care to do the intro?"

"It's a little something I wrote recently and we had some room on the CD after the remix of 'Sandstorm'. Actually, there's two extra on the CD, but this one's my favorite. Its called 'Empty Rooms'."

"First time anywhere, "Empty Rooms'," Div said softly before it began to play.

I'd heard the song before, and I liked it, too, but it gave me a deep ache inside, sad and full of longing. Lots of Miles' songs were on the sad side, and this one was no exception. It was about being in prison, and the empty rooms were the memories of loved ones left behind. I'd had so few people who'd cared about me during my prison days, but I guess it'd been different for Miles. No wonder he'd gotten out before me and never looked back. Having someone to go home to helped a lot, I'm told. But obviously the girl in the song hadn't been Farzimah, so either he was one hell of a storyteller or there was a girl he'd left behind somewhere.

I didn't have time to muse long on the subject, 'cause right after the song there was a bevy of phone calls, mostly from giggling teenaged girls gushing about their newest favorite song. Div picked the seventeenth caller and awarded her a front seat for the Saturday Kharistan Charity Benefit concert.

Lilianne, from Del Mar, shrieked so loudly my ear drums hurt, screaming, "Thank you!" repeatedly until Div put her on hold to get her full name and address while he played a song by Smashmouth.

Miles laughed, rubbing the side of his head as if his ears ached, his arm around Farzimah. Looking out of the glass-fronted studio, I saw Hobbes had made an appearance and was deep in conversation with Sherida.

The remake of the Monkees' hit 'I'm a Believer' was in full swing when the engineer signaled Div to pick up line four. "Hello?" Div asked.

"Put that raghead lover on," a voice sneered, low and menacing.

"This is Miles Verbage," Miles introduced himself into the mic before Div had a chance to stop him.

"Black roses ain't the only thing that'll cover your grave, once you're buried in sand, nobody'll give a shit about you, man. The war's already started, and you better keep your girlfriend's head down low or she'll be next. First one brother, then another, and another…what'll you do when they're all gone? Write a song about it?"

In the middle of the tirade, I'd lunged for the door, pulling it open for Hobbes to hear the voice. He was already on the cell phone to the Agency to see if they could put a trace on the call, follow the connection, something, but the caller clicked off without another word. Apparently Sherida and Hobbes had been able to tell from our expressions that something bad was going down without even having heard the threats.

Dr. Div started an immediate 'golden oldie' segment, setting up 'Hey Jude' and then 'American Pie' to play so we'd have a long uninterrupted period. Engineer Dan replayed the tape for Bobby to hear in its entirety. Sherida was fuming, her black heels clicking loudly on the linoleum as she paced back and forth in the confined space.

I hadn't noticed until then that Farzimah was attempting to hide the fact that she was crying, great big tear drops spilling from her dark eyes, but she bottled up any sounds of unhappiness. Miles still had his arms around her but so tightly I wondered if she'd bruise. He didn't look like he wanted to let go.

"Hobbes, what's your take?" I was feeling way out of my league here. Anonymous threats after what had already happened were serious crap.

"This is bad, my friends, sorry, Princess." He actually rubbed her shoulder briefly, turning the tiny tape Dan had given him over and over in his hands. "This nozzle ever called here before?"

"His voice sounds familiar." Div shrugged. "But so do lots of guys. I've had some nasty complaints on the air--and off--but that's the first definitive death threat." He did look shaken, and kept smoothing down his mustache as if it were fake and he needed to press the glue more firmly into his upper lip.

"That guy's called before," Dan agreed. "I'd say in the last few days, when we've been advertising Miles' appearance."

"You have his name and address?" Miles blurted out.

"I dunno, we only routinely take those if they've won something. Maybe I can search some of the old tapes, but I can't guarantee anything."

"We'd better get the two of you out of here." Bobby took charge which was just fine with me. "There's a major problem, though."

"W-what?" Farzimah sounded like she couldn't handle much more.

"The reason Mr. Hobbes and I were about to come in before," Sherida sighed, her spine rigid with tension. "There's a small but very vocal element of the Kharistan Freedom fighters picketing out from of the building. It'll be next to impossible to get Miles and Farzimah out without causing a scene."

Them again. I was beginning to think small wasn't quite the right word to describe their group. Up and coming threat was more like it.

"We called in the local blues," Hobbes said. "But it may take a while."

"Hobbes." I raised my hand like we were in grade school. "I could…"

"No, Fawkes," he stressed so strongly that Miles looked curiously at us.

"So they're stuck here?" Div growled, "Not good for publicity for the station either."

"I think that's the least of our concerns right now, Elliot," Sherida snapped, pulling out her cell phone and punching in some numbers.

 _Elliot?_ Was that his unused first name or a last name? The mindless speculation took some of the stress out of me, and I pulled Hobbes over to one side, as far away as we could manage in the overly crowded tiny room.

"Hobbes, I could sprinkle on the fairy dust, you could bring Golda around the back and we'd get them out without a fuss," I whispered.

"What'er ya gonna do afterwards, hot shot, give 'em the old amnesia spell so they'll forget they saw you do your top-secret schick?" he hissed. "It's not as if there are killers after them. It's only rock and roll, Fawkes."

"I think there may be killers after them," I countered. "Besides, this doesn't just make KTIT look bad and send Miles' CD in a downward spiral. It messes with some pretty nasty political ramifications centering around the crown prince of Kharistan, and don't forget poor little girls who don't have enough copies of 'See spot run' to read."

Hobbes gave me a look that said bringing up the little girls was a low blow but he gave a barely discernable nod of his head. "Princess, Verbage, we're going out the back. I'll drive the van around and Fawkes will stay with you until the right time to get outta Dodge."

"You can avoid the mob and the press that's accumulated?" Sherida asked speculatively. I was kinda surprised she wanted to avoid the press, but her next statement explained that. "I'll go give a brief statement."

"Good." Hobbes tapped me on the forearm. "Five minutes, Fawkesy, in the loading zone."

"Aye, aye, Captain." I saluted sloppily and led my charges out through the maze like corridors of the radio station. We were on the third floor of a multi-office complex, with a wide variety of tenants. Taking the elevator down to the second, we then found the back stair well that lead to the service entrance and hunkered down.

"We're not going any further until you explain the plan, Darien." Miles stood on the landing down to the first floor, barring my way. He held Farzimah's hand, but she looked somewhat surprised at his attitude.

"Okay, troops," I began lightly, not sure quite how to begin. "Miles, there's a reason I haven't been around lately…"

"I read on the Internet how you got sentenced to a third term," he spoke up, "But obviously you got out. How?"

 _Gee, Wally, I got this gland, see…?_ "This'll take way too long to explain, but suffice to say to get out of prison I agreed to be the lab rat in a government experiment my brother headed up. He did some unorthodox surgery on my brain and implanted a gland." Still looking at their astonished and unbelieving faces, I let the Quicksilver flow, going invisible in a few seconds.

"Allah!" Farzimah breathed, her black eyes wide with shock.

"What the fuck did you do?" Miles swore as I dropped the cover and came back into the visible spectrum.

"S'called Quicksilver," I explained. "My curse, but your salvation, this time. I'm gonna Quicksilver the both of you for the few seconds it takes to get to the van and have Bobby drive us off the property. Then nobody'll notice you've left the building, Elvis."

"N-no, I can't," Farzimah backed up. "How does that affect the structure of the cells? How can your body chemistry function with that additional strain?"

"For you it's kinda like a cold wrap," I answered. "Doesn't do anything to you."

"You're sure?" Miles asked.

"I've Quicksilvered lots of people," I assured. Lots was probably an overstatement but the number was around about ten or so, by my estimation. Of course, Bobby Hobbes counted more than once.

"What about your own electrolytes? Has it compromised your liver?" Farzimah pressed, obviously past her initial scare and into the science of the gland. "What is this Quicksilver comprised of? Who invented it?"

That I could answer. "Unfortunately for everybody, my brother Kevin invented the gland, but he's dead now and he left behind a lot of unanswered questions." I peered out the heavy service door. Hobbes had just pulled up to the dock and I could see his expression through the windshield. He looked on edge. "But we can talk about all this another time. It's time to shine, folks." I grasped both of their hands, taking a deep breath.

Farzimah was still nervous; her hand was icy even before I flooded it with Quicksilver, but Miles was the one who gave an involuntary gasp when we disappeared.

"Cold isn't the half of it." He shivered as I urged them forward. It was a little tricky trying to keep contact with two people and open the door but we made it and crossed the loading dock quickly. Hobbes had already opened the side door of Golda and we piled in linked like cut out paper doll triplets.

Hobbes drove at a cautious speed around the parking lock, then had to stop to avoid hitting anyone in the all out riot waging in front of the building.

Police were wading into a wild melee of flailing arms and legs, grabbing collars and swinging Billy clubs like some flashback to a sixties anti-war demonstration. Not that I'd know much about any of those, besides the fact that my mom once told me she had attended one while pregnant with me, but I've seen enough documentaries on the History channel to know what they looked like. This was a humdinger.

After a few minutes of watching the battle in Quicksilver vision, I was able to identify the separate factions. There were lots of college age guys of every ethnicity, but largely Arab and Asian, fighting a particularly vicious group of girls wearing Mighty Miles for president t-shirts. One chubby blond hit a taller guy with a placard that proclaimed Miles the next king of rock and roll. So much for the discussion Hobbes and I had had in the limo.

Apparently these weren't just the Kharistan Freedom Fighters. A loudly vocal faction of the San Diego chapter of Miles' fan club had shown up to try and breech the station's security and see their god. They took umbrage at the Freedom Fighters' stance on Miles and had started a shouting contest that had quickly disintegrated into this mess. We learned the details later that evening on the six o'clock news but for now, the only thing that was settling the fray was the appearance of Sherida Jefferson, backed up by Mike Kim, Dr. Div and KTIT's PR woman Victoria Viceroy-Wong. She looked pissed.

All four stood just outside the glass doors of the building looking a little nervous about venturing into the war zone. The police had taken control in under five minutes, and I could see Sherida hold up her hands and begin to speak.

Just as Hobbes finally got space to drive the van onto the street, I glimpsed Mike Kim making eye contact with one of the Kharistan Freedom Fighters. Just from their body language and the intensity of their faces, I could swear the two knew each other. I sure wish I had bionic hearing to go along with the invisibility. Us super heroes with only one power can't hold a candle to Superman or Spidey.

The Quicksilver sparkled off of Farzimah and Miles when I cut the flow in my own body and fairly soon we were all what amounts to normal again. But suddenly, I had even more questions than Farzimah had had.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The six o'clock evening news segued into Entertainment Tonight and, of course, Miles was the main topic there. We hadn't been the lead story on channel 17's newscast--a murder in La Jolla had grabbed that choice position, but we'd come in second. ET plugged us in right at the top of the half hour, replaying all the footage local stations had been running all afternoon, making it look like Miles had started World War III. His background, time in prison and views on Kharistani politics were all covered by an earnest blond with widely spaced eyes and the deep, smoky voice of telephone sex-talk girl. Not that I would know anything about that.

Miles sat on the arm of the couch with his hand on Farzimah's shoulder, idly popping pistachios into his mouth. Neither of them looked pleased with the coverage. I'd been draped over a wingback chair for a couple of hours, half-asleep.

"The Official says we can use one of the safe houses to hide you two out for a couple of days." Bobby Hobbes came in with brisk efficiency, brushing his hands together like he'd just baked bread or something.

"Can't," Miles stated simply.

"Man, these people are getting vicious. Death threats, attacks, not to mention getting shot at last week…"

"I will remember that day until I die," Miles retorted.

"Which could be sooner than later," Bobby mumbled.

"Miles, we can cancel the gig this weekend," Farzimah said softly.

"That'll give the press and all the critics more to talk about." He ran long callused fingers through his blond hair, leaving it standing on end a lot like mine did. "I will not be cowed." He glanced between Hobbes and me, saying, "as long as you keep Farzimah safe, that's all I care about."

"What about me?" she asked with tears in her eyes. "What'll I do if you're dead?" With that dire pronouncement, she ran from the room, her black hair trailing after her like a mourning veil.

I had a weird thought about the whole Paul McCartney is dead thing back in the late sixties. I'd been kind of young to understand it all, except Paul in the bear suit--or is it a walrus?--had scared me silly. Maybe a Walrus suit would come in handy here…nah.

"Damn," Miles swore. "Hobbes, Darien, man you guys have really come through and I have this feeling that if we can make it to Amahl's celebration next Friday night, then the rest of it'll blow over. A lot of this is because of the coronation."

"Exactly, and if you want to make it there in one piece…" Hobbes argued, "C'mon, Fawkes, chime in here anytime. He's your friend."

"But won't it look less suspicious if he just follows his normal routine?" I asked lazily. "We've been lucky so far. The next one's at the zoo, isn't it?"

"Yeah, concert near the lion enclosure to raise money for new habitats for the animals. I think they want to breed Cheetahs or something," Miles confirmed.

"Think 'Sandstorm' will get 'em in the mood?" Bobby asked sarcastically.

"Hobbes, buddy, nobody'll attack there, with the lions in the background," I assured with more heartiness than I felt.

"Then it's all settled. No safe house and we go forth with the concert." Miles nodded, a disheveled hank of hair falling over his eyes.

"Not all settled," Hobbes countered, standing in front of the rock star like a cocky pug ready to take on the contender. Miles isn't quite my height but he's got more breadth and the size discrepancy between the two of them was almost comical.

"Hobbes," I said, cocking my head for him to come over.

"I'd better go smooth things out with my girl." Miles smiled sweetly when he said the last two words and headed up the Frank Lloyd Wright style stair case.

"They're courting disaster," Hobbes said.

"Got any other predictions, Cassandra?" I asked, grabbing up the abandoned bowl of nuts.

"You think this is funny, Ulysses?" Hobbes shot back.

"It wasn't exactly the Battle of Troy." I shrugged, "But what'd you find out about the Kharistani Freedom fighters?" I'd belatedly given Hobbes all I knew about the campus rally and seeing Mike Kim eye the Asian on the steps of the KTIT building.

"Exactly the reason I want Verbage and the Princess in a safe house." Hobbes grabbed a handful of nuts, deshelling them viciously. "They are registered with the campus office as a legitimate group, sponsored by a Jin Park. There's two or more branches of the KFF across the state and they've got some big money in the coffers."

"Eberts do a little digging?" I laughed.

"Yeah, sends his love. Official's not too happy you haven't shown your pretty face around the place lately."

"I've been working!" I protested. What did they think I was, twins? Couldn't be guarding the princess taking anatomy classes and going in for boring debriefings with the Fat Man. Besides, there was nothing to debrief--that is until today. "Okay, today is something to report about," I said, taking in Hobbes' disapproving glare. "Before it was just--ordinary life."

"And when I stopped in this morning, unlike some people I could name, I ran into Claire. She wants to reschedule the blood sugar fasting thing."

"She would."

"Says since you got shot, she needs to keep an eye on that sort of thing."

"Getting shot has nothing whatsoever to do with my blood sugar," I pointed out, just to be crystal clear on that point. "I've been shot before, I know." I grinned at the thought of Hobbes going in to keep Claire abreast of my medical condition. That was surely not all they'd talked about, there alone in the Keep. "This job keeping you two apart?" I asked sympathetically. Hobbes reddened slightly, picking through the nuts in his hand for the tasty meat.

"Yeah, well, anyway. The KFF are some up and coming major players and yes, before you ask, we tried to access their membership lists, but they were pretty heavily protected." Hobbes dropped a handful of nutshells in the garbage and wiped his hands clean.

"Eberts couldn't break down their defenses?" I asked incredulously. Eberts could do ANYTHING on the computer. If he could break into the FBI's files, he could manage the KFF's with one hand tied behind him.

"Not so far, when I checked in just now he was still working on it."

"So this Jin Park, what'd you find out about him?"

"Korean money, political--not exactly mainstream democrat or even republican, if you know what I mean."

"Communist?"

"Yeah." Bobby looked surprised, like I'd guessed the correct answer on 'Jeopardy', which I do sometimes. Really. "How'd you know?"

"Farzimah told me. Only she said the KFF was backed by westerners."

"With Korean funds," Hobbes mused. "North Korea is communist. Ya think they're trying to get some allies?"

Whatever I started to say was cut off by the simultaneous entrance of Miles and Mike Kim. Kim barged in the front door with a thundercloud over his head. I expected lightning and thunder to shoot out of his forehead like some cartoon character, he looked that mad.

"Hey, Mike, I had a coupla questions about…" Miles started pleasantly, but the littler man just snarled at him.

"Not as many as I have, Wonderboy," Kim seethed. "I expressly told you to stay off Kharistani politics on the radio, didn't I? Why'd you try and sabotage your own career? You're gonna have to make nice in a big way for this to blow over. The press are having a field day. I don't even want to read some of the slander that's gonna hit the fan tomorrow morning."

"Can you use more clichés?" I muttered to nobody in particular.

"Mike, I didn't start the conversation, Div did. I couldn't ignore what he said," Miles explained reasonably.

"Deflect, Miles. You're a personality, you direct what's being said. And you dropped the ball big time."

"I happen to be very passionate about the Kharistani charities, and Farzimah."

"That's your big problem, Wonderboy, should just drop that girl and focus on your career," Mike ranted, using the room like a giant pinball machine, bouncing off the far wall, making it over to the sliding glass doors overlooking the ocean then back across the room again.

I was tempted to yell out 'ping' whenever he hit a piece of furniture.

"No," Miles said in the same no-nonsense tone he'd used for Bobby's suggestion of a safe house. He glanced back just then as Farzimah came down the staircase, her long black hair now plaited into a thick braid. She smiled a tight little smile that said they were together on this one and nothing and nobody was going to break them up.

Farzimah put her hand in Miles' and stood proudly, showing amazing strength in the face of the nastiness Kim had just thrown at her. "Mike, you were saying?" she asked frostily.

"I want to schedule a major press conference tomorrow morning to deflect what ever shi-crap they're throwing your way. You can apologize for bringing politics into rock and roll and downplay any involvement in Kharistan. Maybe we can cancel-uh-postpone the coronation concert--winter's good for that kind of thing." He hadn't looked at the princess during the entire speech, but now he turned on her, stabbing a stiff fingered hand at her, "And you, sweetheart, need to be a little more like your countrywomen, stay in the background on this one."

"Mike, I'll chalk this up to the fact that you've had a really bad day." Miles could have split wood with the edge on his voice. "But if you ever speak to my future wife in that tone again, you're out the next second."

Both locked eyes, but Kim was the first to look away, his expression clearly frightened, but also shrewd as if he clearly didn't believe Miles Verbage had that kind of leverage over him.

"No press conference tomorrow. If--if I talk to anyone, I'll talk to Barbara Walters on the View. I like her and they've been supportive of my career. And the dinner concert for Amahl stays exactly where it is, next Friday, his birthday. What makes you just think you can just mess around in other people's plans like that? Not to mention other countries?"

I'd never seen Miles in a rage before, but he was tougher than I'd ever given him credit for. Heck, the reason he'd had to cap his teeth was because the other inmates at Soledad were always using him as a punching bag. He'd grown up a lot since then.

"Fine. I'll call Barbara's people. Shouldn't be too hard to get you on, you could take a morning flight out to New York and be on two or three shows in one day. Maybe Today or Rosie O'Donnell. Really good for publicity. The one thing you guys did right on Div's show was air 'Empty Rooms'. There was some great word of mouth from that spin. We can play that up in a major way--just stipulate that you don't get any questions on the whole Kharistani debacle…this could work."

"Only Barbara--the View or her interview show," Miles stated firmly. "My career, Mike, I direct where it's going. Done pretty well for myself so far, haven't I?"

"You can't believe that you were going anywhere until I came along, Wonderboy. Playing college campuses was not the way to the top. You've been rising for the last year because of my business savvy and if you're blind to that, I can't help much longer." Mike shook himself like a dog riding himself of fleas. "Mark my words, this Kharistan shit is going to get you killed."

Farzimah gasped as Kim stalked out.

"Okay, major weirdness in here," Hobbes expressed it for all of us. "You call that nozzle your business manager? He ain't exactly listening to your side o'things."

"He's in it for the money and fame," Miles sighed, sinking into the couch like he was exhausted. I know I felt like I'd had the crap beaten out of me in the last few minutes and I wasn't even a part of the conversation. "A manager with a major star in his stable has some hefty power in Hollywood. Mike's right, he has been the one who got me really noticed by the powers that be, gotten me on Conan and Leno's show, but I feel very strongly on the Kharistan issue. It isn't just because of Farzimah, and I don't think political involvement means you lose your audience."

"Do you think he knows something?" Farzimah asked timidly, her normally brown face almost sheet white. "He just threatened you and you act like you didn't even hear him."

"Mike grandstands, Farzimah, you know that." Miles dismissed the danger but I wasn't sure I agreed with him.

"Miles, we may have more on Mike Kim than just idle threats," I explained the theories Hobbes and I had been tossing about while he was out of the room.

"But Mike's American, born and bred." Miles shook his head. "Just because Kim is a Korean name and so is Park. That's a pretty thin bridge you're building. It just doesn't hold weight."

"I'm still gonna ask Eberts to do a background check on him," Hobbes said stubbornly.

"Why would North Korea be interested in Kharistan anyway?" Miles asked, sounding impossibly naïve. "There are what…20 thousand people in the whole country? It's about the size of Connecticut, for God's sake."

"Three letters, my friend," Hobbes held up the appropriate number of fingers, folding them down as he spelled, "O-I-L."

"But my country doesn't have the oil drilling that Saudi Arabia does, or Kuwait." Farzimah frowned, playing with the end of her long lasso-style necklace. "It's not like we export all that much."

"That's more than North Korea has, Princess," Hobbes answered, "Politically, they're an angry country with a bone to pick. They've been trying to grab a piece of the pie since the fifties and Kharistan is their prize. As long as your family is in power, they don't have a foothold in the government, but with Amahl gone…"

"Or even worse, dead," I said morosely.

"No," Farzimah whispered, the silver chain wrapped suddenly so tightly around her finger it was turning red.

"Then the Koreans could sweep in and take over…" Hobbes finished. "I think that bridge is solid, even if it's built on sand."

"This can't be…" Miles said softly. He took Farzimah's hand, unwinding the binding silver with infinite gentleness. "I can't see Mike involved in…people's lives have been endangered. Melissa was killed. You don't have real proof."

"No," I agreed. "But we may find some easily enough."

"Do so, but keep it completely discrete," Farzimah said in a voice that proved the men in her family weren't the only ones in charge. She knew when to use her power and when to be the quiet, meek princess. "We have one week until Amahl's birthday celebration. I can't let anything happen on his day. There'll be two hundred people in attendance."

"Princess, I think you already know that if necessary, Fawkes can be completely invisible." Hobbes' little joke lightened the somber atmosphere in the room and Farzimah dimpled in response. He hadn't been too thrilled that I'd Quicksilvered Miles and Farzimah but had taken it in stride after ranting for a few moments.

"I'm completely fascinated by your abilities, Darien." Farzimah looked up at me speculatively. "Do you know anything about the properties of the gland?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," I admitted. "But maybe when this is all over I can introduce you to my Keeper--uh--Claire. She's the doctor in charge of the project now that my brother is dead."

"I remember your brother," Miles said suddenly. He had been standing apart from the rest of us with a very distracted expression, probably still pondering Mike Kim's treachery, so his comment surprised me.

"You've seen Kevin?" I asked.

"Back then, when we were in prison." Miles nodded. "When he came to visit you. Not as tall as you are, glasses, much neater hair."

"But I don't remember him ever coming while you were there." I sat down, my legs shaky for reasons I couldn't even fathom. Miles had gotten out before me and Kevin had been away at grad school during my entire incarceration. He'd only visited once that I recalled, while on winter semester break, on his way back to Cold Springs to see Aunt Celia. My uncle had been either dead or was dying of cancer by that time.

"I worked in the infirmary," Miles continued. "You got hurt…" he trailed off, obviously not wanting to go any further, and in one sickening rush I knew why.

"Kevin came to see me then?" My voice sounded hollow and unsteady. I hadn't known, ever. I had no memory of the visit.

"I'm sorry, Darien, I shouldn't have brought it up," Miles apologized. "He looked like a nice guy. Upstanding, I remember him because you didn't seem very much like brothers. We talked for a few minutes."

Hobbes and Farzimah were following this exchange like audience members at a tennis match, their heads turning to Miles and then back to me without a word between them. Farzimah looked confused but interested, Hobbes had a whole different expression, one that scared me. He looked like he knew what I might not be saying and he sympathized.

God, I didn't want that. I didn't want to think about any of it. It had been 13 years almost and I hadn't thought about that week from hell in a couple of months or more. For a while, it had been nightly, then weekly, now it was only sporadically. The dreams dredged themselves out of whatever nasty place they dwelled when they weren't tormenting me and spread their evilness out over a few nights, then usually went away again. Looks like I was in for it tonight.

"L-listen." I tried for a smile, but I'm pretty certain I failed in the attempt. Bobby stepped forward, but I held up a hand like a traffic cop. "Speaking of Claire, she wants me in for my physical tomorrow morning, so I better be going. I'll meet you at the university for chemistry, Farzimah?"

"Yes," she answered automatically. "Two o'clock."

"Hobbes, you take the morning?"

"Sure, partner, anything." Hobbes wanted to comfort, to do something. It was all over his face, but I wasn't about to let him. "You all right? You look like you seen a ghost, and I think you have."

"Kevin haunting me, now that's a good one." I laughed. "I'm just wiped out, gonna get some shut eye. If Eberts gets anything new about KFF's membership or whatever…"

"Yeah, You want to go over to that rally tomorrow night?"

"Plan on it. When do we need to be at the zoo on Saturday, Miles?"

With a sardonic laugh, Miles shrugged. "Mike handles all that stuff. I do what he tells me--within reason, of course. I'd say before noon. Concert is at three."

"You start opening your eyes to this whole thing, Mr. Rock-and-roll-Star," Hobbes started lecturing and I knew it was my chance to get out without any more questions. Even as I eased open the front door and nodded to the two hulking specimens of Kharistan muscle I could hear Hobbes asking, "Now how long has Kim been your manager?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sleep wasn't really what I was after, unless there was someway to blot out the memories I knew were poised on the edge of my subconscious to terrorize me.

I drove out onto a quiet promontory over looking the Pacific. It was inky dark, the moon just a curved line drawn with one of those glowy gel pens little girls like. The ocean was a black void stretching out to join with the dark sky, only a tiny cluster of faint stars breaking the perfect nothingness.

That's what I wanted, nothingness, but I couldn't stop the flood of images in my brain. I didn't remember Kevin, but I remembered more than I wanted to of the rest of it. I couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that Kevin had come to see me. The prison officials must really have been concerned to call in next of kin. Had I really been that bad off?

Nobody really ever told me the total extent of my injuries. I guess they figured I was just a dumb ass prisoner who got beat up; a 21 year old without a lick of sense. Got hauled off to prison before I'd even had that oh-so-important milestone birthday, as matter of fact. So my 'friends', and I say that term laced heavily with sarcasm, had conspired to get me drunk on my birthday.

June 27th, 1989, I had my first 'legal' drink, ha ha, while behind bars. It was 100 proof, deadly stuff, concocted in some hidden still somewhere in the bowels of Soledad, behind a bank of washers in the laundry room, unless I miss my guess. I'd been drunk before, dozens of times, what red-blooded American teenager hadn't passed out with a six pack of Bud? But that prison hooch went straight to my head.

Probably was supposed to, come to think of it. They'd arranged the little party quite deliberately. They kept forcing me to drink more, holding me against a brick wall, someone's fingers so tightly around my neck I couldn't swallow, but when I protested, I got hit. I thought I'd drown in the stuff. Once little Darien was passed out on the floor, he got passed around. And around.

When I finally came to, it was two days later. I had a concussion, bruises and lacerations over 90 of my body, inside and out. Broken ribs, fractured fingers with fingernails ripped to the quick, and stitches in places I didn't even want to know about. Apparently I'd tried to fight back, at least a little, but that memory was lost in the ether.

As was Kevin's visit. I wish I'd known. What had he thought of me? Just another example of how screwed up his younger brother was?

 _Oh, crap._

Why, after all this time did I wish I'd seen him, talked to him? Tried to explain that it wasn't my fault…except he'd just mutter he'd heard it all before. I'd denied culpability too many times before and he'd given up on me.

That was why his visit was such a shock. But it was also a strangely soothing balm. Kevin had been there, maybe sitting by the bed, keeping watch over his battered sibling. And Miles, good hearted Miles, had probably chatted with him, maybe even told him about the college course I'd been trying to finish, there in the prison library.

I had little, maybe pretend, maybe real, puzzle pieces to add to the jumble of memories from that time. Ones that comforted me like none of the others ever had.

Looking out on the vast emptiness of water, I fell asleep with my head bent against the cold glass of the car window. I think I dreamed, but for once there weren't any shadowy inmates closing in around me, cutting off my air. This time there was pain but also a strange sense of protection blanketed around me like cotton batting.

Morning did find me back in my own bed, although I had only the vaguest recall of driving home in the wee hours of the a.m.

I remembered that I was supposed to be fasting just before bringing a hot cup of coffee to my parched lips. I swore loudly but put the tempting cup back down. Well, Claire had better have a pot brewing in the Keep. She did, sometimes, although, most of the time all she had was yogurt and old cartons of take-away Chinese growing moldy in her refrigerator. On occasion, it was difficult to tell the difference between her leftovers and her bacterial cultures.

"Are you all right, Darien?" Claire tightened the tourniquet around my bicep, probing for the vein. Traitorous things that they are, my veins usually pop right up, blue and bulgy, like they welcomed that needle's sharp force.

"Just stayed up kinda late…" I fudged, wincing when she stabbed me. "Ow, that's the brachial vein, right?"

"Very good! I guess taking anatomy is rubbing off on you," she congratulated. We both watched the purple topped tube fill with blood and then a green topped one. Claire slipped the needle out, pressing a cotton ball to the inside of my arm. "You didn't eat anything this morning, did you?"

"Ate pistachios last night and nothing since," I vowed, using the already bent arm to cover my heart. "Miles is having a concert at the zoo tomorrow, are you coming?"

"I wouldn’t miss it. This is so exciting, getting to hear about his life behind the scenes, but the papers weren't very solicitous to him about the radio interview yesterday."

"Tell me about it," I agreed. "But the riot may have helped us find some leads on who is trying to ruin Amahl's coronation."

"Seems a very backwards way of going about things, by sabotaging Miles' life."

"Well, it's designed to look like someone's after Miles, but in fact most of the attacks are really on Farzimah."

"Poor girl." Claire slapped a Band-Aid over the needle mark.

"Don’t you have any with Tweety Bird?" I whined.

"If you want juvenile displays all over your skin, get them yourself," she answered loftily, beginning in on the blood tests.

"By the way, Farzimah is interested in the biology behind the gland and I thought maybe she could talk to you."

"She knows you can…Bloody hell, Darien, how many people did you tell this time?" Claire groaned.

"Just her and Miles. It was kinda important at the time."

"The Official won't be pleased, I must say."

"Can you squeeze her into your busy schedule?" I asked, pronouncing the last word in the British style. "Give her some of the highlights without the top secret stuff?"

"No need to get snippy, I suppose I could explain Quicksilver without giving away too much." Claire transferred some of my blood into a tiny pipette which grossed me out for some reason.

"Anything to eat around here? I'm starving."

"There's a container of lemon yogurt in the fridge, if you're about to keel over in a faint, but don't touch my Jamba juice."

"Just a sip?" I wheedled, giving her the patented big eyes.

"None, get out of here!" she shooed. "Wait, when should I arrive at the zoo?"

"One o'clock would be good, and just tell em you're with me and Bobby. We're on the list." I'd always wanted to say that. Maybe I could get a table at a good restaurant that way. Just mention ol' Miles and me are like this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Darien! Glad I ran into you!" Eberts smiled brightly at me, clutching some papers to his chest. As a matter of fact, Eberts always has some papers. I'd hardly recognize him otherwise.

"Whatcha got, Ebes?"

"I was able to print out a membership list for the Kharistani Freedom fighters. Their firewalls were very impressive, especially for a small political group." He handed over the sheet of names. "There are a number of Kims, which is quite a common name in Korea, so I'm not sure you could positively implicate your Mike Kim with any amount of certainty."

Scanning the list, I had to agree with him. Unless Mike Kim had one hell of a lot of brothers, there were a lot of unrelated Kims on the list. And Jones, and Smiths. "This is bogus. They're probably all aliases."

"I presumed that, as well," Eberts agreed, looking dejected.

"Hey, fax this over to Hobbes at Miles' place, anyway," I said. "At least it's a start."

"You won't be seeing him?"

"I got to go to class with Farzimah. We figured only one of us needed higher education." I was actually trying to avoid talking to Hobbes at all, if I could help it. He'd want to know what had weirded me out so much the night before.

And Miles would want to talk about it, too. If I could just stay out of their ways until the zoo, then everybody would be so busy there wouldn't be time to talk. That was my plan, anyway, and I was sticking to it.

To get into the Middle Eastern mood, I had falafel for lunch, which could go to the head of the class as one of my current favorite lunches. It's healthy, but fried. Little crispy balls of fried chickpea batter nestled in a bed of lettuce and cucumbers inside a pita pocket drizzled with a tangy yogurt sauce. Satisfying with a frosty mug of root beer. Come to think of it, Claire might like it, too. She always likes anything with a little culture added.

I dozed through a lecture on covalents and sub-atomic particles, then followed Farzimah back to Miles' house for dinner. Nobody was in a chatty mood, which suited me just fine. Miles was totally distracted, working on some new song, Farzimah brought her anatomy tome to the table to study and I just shoveled food into my mouth.

Hobbes showed up at seven so we could go back to the university for the Kharistan Freedom Fighters rally, and I let myself be closed into a car with my partner, who was never one to let grass grow under his feet. He launched into his annoy-the-hell-out-of-Darien interrogation technique before we'd even cleared the driveway.

"What was all that last night?"

"Hobbes, just some really old crap from prison. Nothing important."

"Seemed like it was pretty important to me. Scared the shit outta you. You couldn't get out of there faster. What'd ol'braniac brother do?"

"He didn't do anything. I just hadn't known he'd come to visit me."

"The only reason you wouldn't know something like that was if you were in solitary or unconscious. I figure, with your personality, you probably did get solitary once in a while but I'm betting on the latter in this case."

"So." I wasn't about to volunteer anymore information than I had to.

"Fawkes." We'd stopped at a long light and Bobby had time to look over at me. His voice was soft with compassion, and it hurt.

After all this time I didn't want sympathy for what had happened. I didn't want to remember it, but that had already happened, so I guess I had to get the whole treatment.

"How bad?" Bobby asked after we'd looked at each other for a few minutes. I turned away, pretending that the McDonald's Super Playland was the most amazing sight in all of San Diego.

"I got hurt. Kevin came to visit me. I wasn't told. End of story, can we get on with what we're supposed to be doing now?" I tried to sound angry but it was really resignation what came out. I knew full well that Hobbes would badger me until I confessed. "I stopped and talked to Eberts about the KFF, and looks like most of the membership list is bogus."

"I concur. I read what he faxed me."

That just struck me as funny. "You concur? When did you go to law school, barrister?"

"In my spare time, while you were in the clink."

"So, I'm thinkin' that this whole North Korean thing might really be a big threat. Y'know they have nuclear capabilities?"

"You're just avoiding the subject big time, junior."

"Yeah, how'm I doing?" I grinned at him with all my teeth.

"You stink." Hobbes shook his head, "I know you don't wanna talk about that kinda shit, but it helps. Years and years of therapy have taught me that."

"Hobbes, I hadn't even given it much thought in…a while. Spending time with Miles is just bringing up stuff I'd let get buried."

"Nightmares?"

"Yeah."

"How often?"

"Not very," I hedged.

"Last night?"

"No." Okay, that was the truth. I hadn't had the usual dream, not last night anyway.

"Rape?"

That one hit me out of left field and I cringed in spite of myself. "Yeah."

"So bad you were unconscious?" His voice was light, but the tension in the car was as thick as summer humidity in Galveston. I could tell Hobbes was trying not to be angry about something that happened thirteen years ago but it was pushing all his buttons.

"What did you expect, Hobbes? You knew, I told you about other stuff." I came on too strong, the anger and pain suddenly way out of control and it took a lot of effort to drop down into an acceptable range. Taking a slow breath, I tried to lick my lip but my mouth was too dry. "This one was just unexpected cause I didn't know about Kevin, and it hit me hard. It's over. It's done, and it's way past."

"If you say so," Hobbes said quietly.

"I do. And don't go psychoanalyzing my repressed thoughts and misplaced anger, Dr. Freud, cause you got issues, too."

"No disputing that, my friend. I just wanna make sure you're getting enough sleep at night. I know the seven kinds of hell a person can put themselves through in the long, dark hours."

"You should be writing Irish poetry, you know that? A bottle of whiskey and a pint of Guinness, and you'd be all set." I was never so glad to see the cluster of buildings making up the university come into view. We could go onto more acceptable topics of conversation, like the take-over of the Kharistan royal family. Religion might be good, too. Then we could hit all the big three--Sex, politics, and God. Whenever I get my singing career going, that'll be the title of my first CD.

I slipped out of the car while going Quicksilver and sidled up to the nondescript building where people were gathering. I think it had been a 'portable' in its former life but had acquired a cement base and fairly permanent looking stairs, no longer earning the sobriquet portable. But, stuck out on the edge of the parking lot it didn't make for a very elegant meeting hall.

The people began to file into the room, pouring themselves cups of coffee before sitting down in a mismatched assortment of chairs. I don't know what I'd been expecting, but tonight's meeting was something of a disappointment. There were maybe thirty people there all total, a large number of Asian, it's true, although I couldn't have reliably told a Korean from a Japanese from a Chinese. but there were almost as many Caucasian and African-Americans with a smattering of Arabs thrown in for good measure. A diverse group of political war mongerers. Unfortunately, nobody plotted the overthrow of the current regime or even discussed bomb-making 101. Of course, these days, anyone can look up how to make a bomb on the Internet. All in all, they just talked, like all these types do, to hear their own rhetoric and agree with themselves.

I slipped out to give Hobbes a heads up and let him decide if I needed to stay and be tortured into unconsciousness by all the pretentious filibustering wannabes. I, naturally, was of the opinion that this was all a great big waste of time, when I spotted two men getting out of a red late model Acura.

Hobbes must have parked Golda somewhere else and found himself a hiding place, because I couldn't see him anywhere. He couldn't see me, either, I suppose, since I was still Quicksilvered. I just waited by the door of the portable, watching the two men approach. They were almost within arms length of me before I could accurately confirm what I'd suspected from the minute I saw them. One was Mike Kim. The other looked enough like him to be a brother. Ah, the plot thickens and gels, since this certainly went a long way to proving Kim's duplicity.

I hoped their arrival would liven up the meeting, and it did. Kim immediately called for volunteers to picket the zoo on Saturday and went over further plans for another protest march for the following Friday at the hotel where Amahl's dinner was being held. Nothing juicy or illegal in the least. Discussion of what to write on their placards occupied the rest of the meeting until a pretty young girl with a heart shaped face and thick black dreads like Whoopi Goldberg passed around a tin of homemade fudge. The fudge went quickly and so did the freedom fighters, running off to their dorm rooms and beds while visions of anarchy danced in their heads.

But I wanted proof. Mike Kim was a worm, and I wanted his ass in jail. He'd gotten Melissa Beatten murdered. That could get him manslaughter, and there were probably a whole host of other charges we could throw at him. I just hoped he ended up in Soledad in the same block as some of my old acquaintances.

I let the Quicksilver flake off in the shadow of a eucalyptus, the sinus-clearing scent of the leaves overpowered by the smell of leaking oil when Golda pulled up beside me.

"Where were you, man? I never saw you," I complained.

"The mark of a good spook, Fawkes. Don't need the gland to be invisible, you see?"

"I see said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw."

"That's funny," Hobbes said blandly, driving off the university property. "What did Kim say?"

"You saw him?"

"I saw him, Kim."

"And Kim's twin?"

"You sure it was a twin?"

"Or maybe a clone, Dr. Seuss."

"If the North Koreans had that kind of technology, that would be news." Hobbes nodded.

I outlined what was said. "Can't we just go in and grab Kim now? We know he's plotting a coup. That's grounds for arrest in my book."

"Don't go putting down any wagers on Kim just yet. Tonight sounds like it was small potatoes. We need the brass--there's probably somebody above Kim and I wanna get 'em all from the top down. At least we know to watch out for him, keep our eyes open and our ears to the ground."

"In case the Indians attack, Lone Ranger?"

"Always worked before, Kemosabe." Hobbes chuffed a laugh when he let me off at my place.

The demons let loose that night, tap dancing their nasty images across my brain pan while I was paralyzed in the deepest depths of sleep. At least I got a little sleep before the nightmare, cause I got none afterwards. I wasn't about to give the nightmare prison bullies any more leverage over me than they already had in real life. So, I watched TV the rest of the night, dozing over reruns on Nickelodeon. 'Cheers', 'All in the Family'…nothing with any prison scenes or monsters. Had enough of them in my life right now, thank you very much.

The morning found me groggy and barely functioning. Coffee, the ordinary way, left me with enough cognitive functions to drive over to Miles'. I kind of wondered if injecting the caffeine straight into my veins would have been more effective. Except, after two years of needles nearly every day, there's no way I could have given myself a shot. Lucky for me I wasn't diabetic.

The oceanside house was in a state of only half-controlled chaos. The zoo officials called hourly wanting assurances that there would not be a repeat of the 'riot' from Thursday afternoon, and all of us agreed on that point.

Miles drank tea; singing scales and riffs by the piano with a slight frown when he didn't like the sound he was producing. Farzimah had packed up several boxes of the photos Miles had signed to be presented to the concertgoers. Special T-shirts with a lion and the zoo's logo along with a smaller version of the 'Sandstorm tour '02' graphic were handed out to all the crew, including Hobbes and me. I was beginning to have quite a collection of Miles Verbage t-shirts, and wondered how much I could expand my wardrobe before this gig was over and I had to go back to being a Federal agent. Maybe if I got Miles to sign one, I could sell it on E-bay.

Mike Kim was in his element, running around with a clipboard in one hand and a cell phone in the other, assigning jobs, putting out fires and talking non-stop. As usual, he was a worrywart, constantly reminding everyone of what they already knew they were supposed to be doing.

Joe Lincoln, a reporter Rolling Stone, was now following Miles around, jotting down notes and asking questions. The problem was, he was constantly in the way, always standing in front of a box Farzimah wanted or blocking the door when a roadie was carrying equipment out to the car. Hobbes finally made Lincoln park it in an overstuffed chair near the piano and told him to shut up.

Luckily, he hadn't brought a photographer with him, since he said he preferred studio shots, but Sherida was there to get those candid shots for the teen magazines. She took pictures of Miles from every single angle imaginable. It seemed like hours before everyone managed to pile into limos for the less than half-hour drive to the zoo. I nearly fell asleep on the short ride, that's how tired I was. This did not bode well for the rest of the day.

Letting the techs and roadies do their jobs and unload the band equipment, I patrolled the outer limits of the area cordoned off for the concert, trying to think like Bobby Hobbes. Where would a sniper want to hole up? Which direction would be the best for a guerrilla attack? Up and around the lion enclosure and past a wooded area, then down a path and back to the temporary stage I slogged, trying to walk off my sleepiness. Hopefully we would have the rent-a-cops that Bobby was currently grilling into shape in position so that no one without a ticket slipped by one of us.

"You're security with Verbage's group?" A portly black man looked at me speculatively as if assessing whether he trusted me or not.

"Darien Fawkes, with the Department of Fish and Game." I flashed my badge with a slight smile of triumph. Usually, I felt kind of stupid admitting it, since people often greeted me with even more skepticism after they heard where I worked. Today, however, there was a legitimate reason for Fish and Game to be involved. Who knew what kind of noise pollution and stress levels a rock concert would cause to the caged animals? Maybe they weren't even rock fans.

"Yeah, I knew you guys might get involved." The man scratched his Elvis-style mutton chop whiskers with a sage nod. "M'bassa Muanga. Head of security for the zoo."

"Mr. Muanga." I shook his had with careful solemnity. He seemed the sort who went by the book, all manners and protocol.

"Already had intensive studies done on the noise levels--just the cars going by outside the park generate a considerable amount, but since this concert's only about two hours, the expert concluded that there wouldn't be much harm." He shook his head with a smile. "I'm not really sure how they figured that out, but anyway…"

"Any concerns about the security from your end, Mr. Muanga?" I asked.

"I've had it from on high that there will absolutely not be any riots or protesting."

"I've heard that one, too," I agreed. "And to that end, I have a list for you." I handed over the license plate numbers of each car I'd seen in the university parking lot the night before. Every one of them belonged to a member of the Kharistan Freedom Fighters. "Keep your eyes peeled for these cars. This is the group who picketed the radio station and we are aware that they have plans to picket the zoo, as well. Keep them off the property and there won't be any trouble at all."

"Impressive." Muanga scanned the list. "Where'd you get this?"

"Field work," was all I told him before I walked away.

By the time I got back to the arena, Miles was prowling around the small stage, getting a feel for the place. He pantomimed a few dance moves, keeping out of the way of the band members plugging their electric guitars and assembling drum sets. The guy I'd seen at the first concert, Randy, the stage manager, adjusted one of the mics and handed it over to Miles, encouraging him to sing so the sound engineer could do a sound check.

I headed over to where Hobbes was standing with his hands on his hips like he wasn’t quite sure he'd remembered to go over every contingency.

"Don't sweat it so much, Hobbesy."

"What? We know there's a death threat out on the princess and probably Verbage as well!" he retorted.

"Hobbes, there's gonna be enough cops and security guards here to qualify for a law enforcement convention. Frankly, it's making me sweat, an' it's been years since I had any outstanding warrants."

I got Hobbes to laugh, even though he acted like he didn't think what I said was funny.

On the stage, Miles warbled, "Oobie abba nabba, noobie abba nabba, early morning singin' song…" Nonsense lyrics filled the arena, his voice rich, melodic and clear.

"Who got paid to write stuff like that?" I asked rhetorically, not quite recognizing the origin of the tune.

"Good morning, sunshine…" Miles crooned, throwing his head back so his long blond hair glinted in the noon light. It was a spectacular day for an outdoor concert.

"Neil Sedaka." Hobbes squinted into the sun.

"Neil Sedaka didn't write that, it's from 'Hair'." The showtune came to me with a sudden clear memory of seeing Miles strut his stuff in a prison talent show singing the same song.

"No, but he got paid for writin' similar drivel." Hobbes started to sing, "down dobie do down down, comma comma, down dobie do down down…"

I couldn't help myself, I nearly busted a gut laughing at Bobby's singing.

"Breakin' up is hard to do…" Farzimah finished the song, giggling. She hopped from bleacher to bleacher like I used to in high school when I was trying to ditch P.E. "I know one. Bibbiti, bobbeti boo!"

"Aw, now that's a classic." I nodded. "The fairy Godmother in 'Cinderella'."

"How do you know that?" Hobbes questioned.

"Hobbes, I said, it's a classic, must be a little before your time, though."

"Huh, a lot you know." Hobbes pretended to give me the evil eye, catching sight of Claire at the security barricade. "Zippity do dah."

"He's sweet on her, isn't he?" Farzimah observed, watching Hobbes escort Claire inside and giving her a backstage lanyard like we were all wearing.

"Sweet on her? Farzimah, you've been watching too much fifties TV." I climbed up to the top of the rank of bleachers because I had just realized that the parking lot and entrance to the zoo could be seen that way.

"Oh, I love staying up and watching the oldies." She grinned, fingers entwined in the long purple lanyard which made the plastic pass with Miles' picture dance up and down like a puppet. "I can't miss 'The Donna Reed Show'."

"You like Donna? Me, I'm a Beaver Cleaver man, myself," I said, still watching the lines of fans waiting in an orderly fashion outside the zoo entrance.

The regular zoo goers were being directed through one gate, and the ones with concert tickets were being held until one o'clock for the three o'clock concert. Everything seemed to be going so smoothly I felt antsy, and I couldn't relax. That old superstition that if you wish somebody good luck or say things were going well, everything would suddenly go to hell in a handbasket kept bothering me.

Our track record had been so bad lately; I had reason for concern. But Muanga's men must have been doing good work cause I didn't even see any of the KFF out on the street in front of the zoo. What I did see were news vans from every local TV station in the San Diego area sitting like vultures waiting for the war. Well, it wasn't going to happen. I'd made promises to the zoo officials.

"I can see you being Beaver when you were younger." Farzimah climbed up next to me, but she only had eyes for the blond strutting his stuff on the stage.

"Miles been telling stories about me?" I asked, not willing to look at her. He wouldn't have told her, would he?

"Only that he really liked you, and couldn't figure out why somebody like you ended up a thief."

"Speak for himself." It was hot in the direct noon sunlight up that high and I started to climb down, feeling sorry for anybody who had tickets for those seats. There was little shade there.

"Mmm." She considered this. "He did it for the adrenaline high. I think he gets that on the stage now."

"Something to be said for adrenaline." I let out a pent up breath; glad she wasn't going to ask me about my behavior from the other night. "That instant when you have the merchandise in your hand, nothing's better. What a rush. There's a whole different rush when the police catch up to you."

"I'll bet." She flipped her badge once more before tripping lightly down the bleachers after me. "I'm just glad you've both taken a different line of work, cause I never would have met you if you'd gone to prison."

I considered what she said as the arena began to fill up. I had gone to prison, but I'd gotten that deus-ex-machina reprieve and became a free man. And I'd met a lot of good people because of it. Sometimes I missed the rush of being a thief, but on days like today, with the sun in my eyes and Miles' back up band warming up with a few riffs, I kind of liked where I was right then. My weariness from the sleepless night had vanished with the excitement of the concert, and I was really starting to have a great time.

Back stage was a rush all it's own. Miles had changed into his rock star clothing; skin tight black leather pants, a silver t-shirt so tight it looked sprayed on, and once again sported a ring on almost every finger.

He bounced around on his toes sipping bottled water and mouthing the lyrics to his songs like he'd forget a word once on stage. Farzimah sat on the couch giving him supportive encouragement and eating handfuls of M and M's. Not just the purple ones this time, these were multi-colored, more different hues than I'd ever seen before, and I had to eat a few just to convince myself that they really did all taste the same.

Mike Kim was going over a list of the reporters he'd promised an 'exclusive' interview with Miles, which in reality meant five minutes each with _The Star,_ but I don't think Miles was paying much attention. The guy from 'Rolling Stone' had apparently learned his lesson and was staying out of the way, but Miles did finally come down from what ever cloud he was on to give Joe a few quotes. I'd gotten so used to Sherida snapping pictures I barely noticed her anymore, but once when Hobbes came in to give me a sit-rep, he glared at her until she lowered the camera rather than take his picture.

Miles was literally minutes from going onstage when Muanga found me in the crush of techies, beckoning me over. "Fawkes, Verbage got a delivery--some flowers, but with security so tight we're not letting anybody past the loading dock, so I thought I'd get one of these guys to go over and pick it up. That okay?"

"Flowers?" My heart rate sped up so fast I had to do some quick Lamaze style breathing to stop the flow of Quicksilver. Even so, I felt that telltale tingling in my fingers and hid my hand in my pants pocket. "What'd they look like?"

"Unusual, long stemmed black roses with a big black ribbon tied around," he answered.

I'd known I could trust the man, he knew better than to let anyone in carrying a long florist box. In every Mafia movie I'd ever seen, the assassin carries his rifle in a florist box. At least we didn't have that to worry about, but the roses didn't make me very happy.

"Crap," I whispered, hoping neither Miles nor Farzimah saw me. "You stay here, watch for anybody who looks even remotely suspicious. I'll go check out the delivery. And if you see my partner Hobbes, send him my way."

"Will do." Muanga nodded, crossing his arms over his barrel chest. Nobody dared get past him or there'd be hell to pay.

I took off as quickly as possible considering the amount of people I had to maneuver around, hearing Miles' voice boom out over the sound system.

"Hello, San Diego!" he shouted, and the audience loved him, roaring their approval. With that wave of sound, the lions roared out, too.

It was too loud, and my nerves were suddenly close to snapping. I barely managed to slip behind the cover of some eucalyptus before the Quicksilver came out in an overwhelming gush. Damn, I wish I could manage better control, but at least I was able to slip past guards and TV reporters with more ease.

Behind me, I could hear the band launch into the first number. I knew the song order for this concert by heart, having heard Miles rehearse several times over the last few days. 'Ode to the Old Time Rockers' wasn’t as popular as 'Sandstorm' but it was a rousing rock and roll anthem with nods to half a dozen of the past greats like the Beatles, Stones, Dobie Brothers and more. I wished I could stay and listen, but by the time I'd made it to the loading dock only the thrumming backbeat was still audible. I shed my silver skin behind a dumpster before walking inside the supply warehouse. A long white florist box lay on the foreman's desk and he looked mighty glad to have someone come to take it off his hands.

"You with that rock and roll geek?" The beer-bellied man gave the box a little push. "Take this thing away, gives me the creeps."

Opening the box, I had to agree with him. The roses were a weird shade; not really black but darker than any rose I'd ever seen before. Draped over the flowers was a banner inscribed with the words 'So sorry for your loss' in gold letters.

"Don't like funeral arrangements?" I asked rhetorically.

"Who died?" he grunted.

"Nobody, yet." I gathered up the box. Just touching it gave me the heebie-jeebies. I really wanted to run back to the arena and pull Miles off the stage immediately. Luckily, Farzimah was sitting with Mountain Man. I'd insisted on it.

Where could I stash the flowers so that Miles and Farzimah never had to see them? And who had ordered the flowers now that Mohammed was behind bars? Had Kim done the dirty work himself? Not likely, he probably had dozens of stooges in the ranks.

"Another one?" Hobbes came up behind me and peered in the box. The foreman had gone out to help unload a shipment of monkey chow, leaving us alone in the warehouse.

"Hobbes, we gotta warn Miles and end the concert now. This maniac just won't stop. Mike probably arraigned to have these sent over beforehand to freak everybody out and they got here late,"

"Not stopping the concert now, Fawkes." Hobbes didn't touch the banner, but it was doubtful there was any incriminating fingerprints there unless the poor schmuck who worked in the back of some local florist was a member of the Kharistan Freedom Fighters. "The press would be all over this in a New York second."

"Hobbes, they could be gunning for Farzimah right now!"

"I don't think so, The flowers are warnings," Hobbes pointed out. "It's the times there are no flowers that stuff happens."

"Yeah, I guess so," I conceded.

"But you're right about one thing, Kim--and whoever he's working with, is getting more dangerous each time. First they just broke into Farzimah's car, then they tried to shoot her…"

"What next?" I asked, not really wanting to know.

"Something bad, my friend, something really bad."

"You sure it's not gonna happen today?"

"Sure as I can be about something that important." He frowned, obviously concerned despite his words.

I'd never forgive myself if there were a shooting while we stood talking about contingencies, but I could still hear the throbbing bass guitar and thump of the drums, so the concert was in full swing and nothing seemed amiss.

"Well, Miles is leaving for New York in the morning for a whole bunch of interviews." I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling the ridge of the scar there. "How're we gonna keep him safe?"

"Got a quarter?"

"You wanna make a phone call? I got my cell."

"No, Einstein, we can flip for who goes to New York."

"I call tails," I said, producing a quarter from my pocket. It was one of the new shiny state quarters. Just out of curiosity, I checked what state was on the backside. Weirdly, it represented New York.

Hobbes flipped the coin up and caught it in one hand, slapping it down on the back of his wrist. "Heads it is, I go." He grinned. "Maybe I'll have enough time to get a dog at Nathan's."

"That was rigged somehow, I just haven't quite figured it out yet." I grabbed for the money but he'd pocketed it before I had a chance to see whether it really had been George Washington's head on the winning side. "I'll stay so close to Farzimah she'll think we're Siamese Twins."

"The term is conjoined now, don't you ever watch Discovery channel?" Hobbes corrected, taking the long white box containing the roses. "Got the name of the place that sent these?"

"Luckily the zoo requires all deliveries to be logged in." I pulled the manifest list towards me. "Petal Pretty Posies on San Luis Ave."

"Then I think I'll pay them a little visit while you hang with the roadies and watch out for over enthusiastic fans tearing off Verbage's clothes." Hobbes tipped an imaginary hat.

"What are we gonna do about Kim?" I persisted, not entirely comfortable with the whole situation. There was barely a week to go until Amahl's birthday, and we still didn't really have enough evidence to arrest the guy. "Can't we get a search warrant for his house? Roust some of these freedom fighters? What if he makes a move before you guys get back from the East Coast?"

"He can't, Fawkes. This whole thing is designed to take down the royal family. Since he hasn't been able to stop them ahead of time, I think Kim is gonna wait until Friday and hit hard then, right when it can do the most damage."

"At the dinner where there'll be one hundred people. Crap, Hobbes, what if he succeeds?"

"It's our job to see that he doesn't. We can't tip our hand too soon that we suspect Kim, though. Don't act any different around him, but I'm still gonna have Eberts diggin' into his past. He's only been Verbage's manager for about a year."

"Yeah, exactly when his career took off. Miles is right, the guy put him on the right track."

"But maybe for a reason. Did Wonderboy know Amahl before that?"

"I think so."

"So, maybe this whole thing has been goin' on longer than any of us realize. You notice the KFF's got someone on both the princess and that kid Amin? Wonder if there's anybody in Amahl's circle of friends who shouldn’t be trusted, capiche?"

"I'll see if Farzimah has any ideas." I nodded soberly.

Miles ended the show with the new single 'Empty Rooms' to much applause, but when he started to leave the stage, the crowd roared for an encore. Smiling sheepishly, Miles plunked himself down on the edge of the stage and picked up the lead guitarist's discarded wooden instrument. As the audience silenced, he started to sing 'Sandstorm', strumming the guitar with a gentle hand.

As if he'd waved a magic wand over the people, they started to join in, softly at first, then with more enthusiasm as he encouraged the singing. By the end, everyone was singing the mournful lyrics. Bending his head down, Miles placed his fingers over the neck of the guitar, playing the first of the weird atonal chords he'd added to the special edition. The rest was swept away in a thunder of clapping that set off the lions again. Even the monkeys added their howls to Miles' acclaim.

The concert was a resounding success. The zoo was happy, having made a mint for their new animal habitat, and the mayor of San Diego even came up on stage to give Miles a key to the city. The press, showing just how fickle they can be, gushed at Miles' good looks, talent and philanthropic endeavors. Mike Kim was even happy, since there hadn't been one word spoken about a certain country adjacent to Uzbekistan.

Afterglow is a marvelous thing. It was like romance was in the air back at Miles' house. He and Farzimah were curled up in their favorite spot smooching, and even Hobbes took the opportunity to show Claire the terrace by moonlight. That left me in the room with half a dozen drunken roadies, and Joe Lincoln trying to make time with Sherida. What is it with her? Every guy, except me, was chasin' her skirt.

"Hey, Fawkes, wanna another beer?" Randy-the-stage-manager grinned lewdly as he held up a local brew called 'Naked Ass'.

Okay, this was getting entirely out of hand. Mountain Man, being a Muslim, had abstained from the boozing and had the door, so I was out of there fast. I wasn't at all ready for a replay of Darien does Soledad.

The air was crisp and so clear there was even a sprinkling of stars that managed to vie for brightness with the lights of downtown San Diego. I wanted sleep, but my mind kept going over what we'd learned today. Just as Hobbes and I had suspected, the flowers had been purchased ultimately by the Kharistan Freedom Fighters.

A woman with the pretty name of Jade Song owned the credit card used to buy the flowers. Eberts tracked her down by checking out her credit history and then her driver's license. And then her rap sheet--she'd been arrested four times, all for resisting arrest after police tried to break up protest rallies. I recognized her picture cuz she'd been at the at the on-campus meeting Friday night. Armed with this info, we also backtracked Mohammed Hassem, the guy who'd killed Melissa, and discovered he was with the KFF as well.

We'd finally gotten word from Dr. Div's studio engineer that they had no record of the threatening caller's name, so we just had his voice to go on. Even with a voiceprint, without the actual voice to compare it with, he could be any one of the thousands of people within range of KTIT's signal. The thing is, I had a feeling he was with the KFF, too.

'Curiouser and curiouser' as my friend Alice in Wonderland once said.

Sleep is the great equalizer, and I finally succumbed. I was tired enough that I didn't even dream, and that in itself was a great relief.

On the seventh day of the week, we didn't get any rest. There were travel plans to go over, clothes for each interview to be packed and much discussion about what everyone else would be doing while Miles was on the publicity junket. He'd finally agreed to more than just Barbara Walters show, and if he started with the talk shows taped early in the morning and took cabs between TV studios, he could be on several in a single day. That meant the 'Today' show, then 'Rosie', then 'The View'. After that there was time out for lunch and a nap before quick interviews with Oprah's magazine people, 'People' magazine's people and then onto the night time talk shows. David Letterman first and then that Kilborn guy I never watch. I was floored when I saw the schedule Mike Kim had laid out, and said so.

"This will go a long way to easing people's minds about the whole Kharistan debacle. No mentioning the political problems in other countries, right, Miles?" Mike stressed the word 'right' and I could see Miles chafe under the scrutiny.

That kind of hard-handed control always pushed my buttons and made me want to deliberately rebel. I had a feeling Miles was the same way.

"If Miles stays on topic, just promotes the 'Sandstorm' tour, which will be in New York at Madison Square Garden in one month, so the timing of this couldn't be better," Mike continued as if he hadn't noticed the mutiny on Mighty Miles' face. "Then we'll sell out that concert. With upcoming interviews in several magazines all at once, his picture will be all over the news stands. We'll be minting CDs. Sales will sky rocket."

"Mike, I can't ignore the birthday dinner, or the concert next week, and especially my own charity!" Miles replied heatedly. "I can't understand your whole problem with Kharistan."

"Makes you too political, Miles, too topical. Doesn't make money over the long run. Farzimah won't be with you, so she won't be a topic of conversation…"

"I resent that." Farzimah crossed her arms.

I inclined my head, pulling her away from the fray.

"The special edition of 'Sandstorm' doesn't hit stores until after the dinner, so stick with the tour and everything's copacetic."

"Yeah, you've just gagged me on every topic I'm interested in. What am I supposed to talk about--my childhood in Tarzana or maybe that old stand-by, my stint in the joint. Maybe I should bring Darien along to swap stories with, huh?" Miles stomped off stiff-legged just as one of the roadies came in to announce the airport limo had arrived. Miles stormed towards the back door, giving the sliding glass such a violent shove I was amazed it stayed on the runners.

Farzimah pursed her lips, a determined expression crossing her pretty features and whispered, "I'll go talk to him, stall Mike."

I nodded, trying frantically to think of something to say that wouldn't fan the flames any higher but Kim beat me, coming up with an opening phrase on his own. "Security went off without a hitch yesterday, Fawkes," Mike said. "I was against Miles hiring you and Hobbes, but I guess you've shown your worth. But I was wondering, usually there are lots of deliveries--flowers, candy, even girl's underpants before a concert. I only saw one or two bouquets…did you divert some of them?"

That was one of the hardest moments I've ever had to withstand. Mike just looked placidly at me, but I could feel the diabolical strength that made him one of the leaders of the Kharistan Freedom Fighters. He knew we knew about him. But how? Luckily for me, Hobbes walked in the front door dragging his wheeled suitcase behind him.

"The limo's here," he announced gaily. "Everybody ready?"

"Tell the driver it'll be a few minutes," Kim told Zooey who loped out with the message.

"Hobbes, Mike wants to know what happened to all the flowers that were delivered." I had to work to keep my voice on an even keel.

"Oh, yeah." Hobbes smiled brightly. "Miles asked us to send a bunch over to his fan club. Said they got the raw end of the deal th'other day. Two girls got arrested in the fracas and one had a concussion. Nasty bunch, those Kharistan Freedom Fighters."

"Very kind of him, I'm sure. The girls must have loved the flowers," Mike said stiffly. "Those protests are all the more reason why I want Miles to stay within boundaries on his conversational topics." He checked his watch and shook his head. "I need to wrap up a few last minute details."

When Mike had left Bobby smiled evilly, "Any wagers on who he's callin'? Jade Song, or whatever her real name is?"

"Hobbes, you're such a cynic."

"I'm going to be miserable without you until Tuesday," Farzimah was saying as she and Miles walked back inside the living room. His whole mood had lightened by whatever method she'd used to persuade him to calm down, and he now looked shrewd and a bit crafty.

"What's on your mind, Mighty Mouse?" I asked.

"Oh, I see Amin revealed his favorite nickname." Miles rolled his eyes, brushing his blond bangs out of his eyes. "Got to get this cut before Friday."

"Miles has decided on a quiet revolt." Farzimah was twisting her fingers around one another since she didn't have any dangly jewelry or laces to abuse her fingers with, but she looked secretly delighted.

"Always ready to back the rebel forces, Luke Skywalker," I said. "What's your idea?"

"Where's Mike?" Miles asked cautiously.

"In the study. Wanna take it out by the pool?" Hobbes directed, pointing to the still open sliding glass door.

"I'm through with listening to Mike Kim," Miles vowed, starring down at the pristine aqua colored water in his Olympic length swimming pool. The whole time I'd been with Verbage, I'd never actually seen anyone use it. "He's diametrically opposed to my ideals and if any of what you two are saying about him is true…"

"It's true," I said morosely.

"Then I can't have him as a manager. This is way beyond my comfort level, guys." Miles threw up his hands like he was tossing his whole career into the pool. Farzimah curled herself around him, resting her head on his shoulder. "He's dangerous, made threats against Far, and associates with that misnamed bunch of freaks. It's madness."

"Now slow down here," Hobbes cautioned. "Take Cheryl Crow's advice, soak up some sun and lighten up."

"I'm amazed hearing that come out of your mouth!" I took a step back to regard Bobby Hobbes in a whole new light.

"Why? I know how t'relax," he defended himself, stretching out on a chaise lounge to catch some rays.

"No, I'm amazed you listen to current top forty stuff."

"He has a point." Farzimah rubbed her hand down the silky sleeve of Miles' surfboard print Hawaiian shirt in a comforting manner. "We still have six days until the dinner and another day until the benefit. We can't go around all stressed out for nearly a week, especially if you have to be on the other side of the country with that…" the word she said sounded harsh, nasty and full of spit. I could only assume it was pure Kharistani and probably untranslatable.

"Don't hold back, Princess." Hobbes grinned at her. "Kim's already got suspicions about us. Verbage, you've got to act like nothin's different, except your political opinions. I'm all for you undermining his authority, but don't go overboard."

"Can't you arrest him since you know he's involved?" Miles pushed at his bushy hair again in frustration.

"All we've got at this point are suppositions," Hobbes continued. "Nothing concrete enough to stand up in court. It's not against the law in the U.S. of A. to gather in a group and voice your opinion against any other group."

"But he's associated with a murderer--you said so yourself," Farzimah sighed.

"Again, we can't really arrest him on that." Hobbes shaded his eyes; the noon sun was pretty fierce.

"So, go to New York and do the interviews," I said with encouragement. It didn't sound all that great even to my ears. "Maybe by Tuesday we'll have some more answers. Or even an idea of what's going down on Friday."

Miles nodded, hugging Farzimah to his body, "God, I hate these cookie cutter publicity things. Asked the same questions over and over again."

"So what's this little insurrection you have planned?" I grinned.

"I'll play the good rock star on the 'Today' show, maybe sneak just a mention of Farzimah in on 'Rosie'. By 'The View', I'll just be warming up. I can say whatever I want to in the magazine interviews, they won't come out for a month or two anyway. If Mike protests, that's too fuckin' bad. By the late night shows, I'll be in my element. They're interested in the political and fringe stuff."

"Too bad you didn't get booked on 'Politically Incorrect', " Bobby said dryly, but with a glint of humor in his eyes. "We'd better get a move on if we're gonna make it to the airport on time."

"Yeah." Miles bussed Farzimah on the cheek. "You already checked on the CD's we're giving out on 'Rosie'?"

"Already Fed Exed, I promise." She nodded. "And I packed a 'Sandstorm' tee you signed for her to auction off on E-bay."

 _Damn, there went my idea._

"Then let's get this show on the road," Miles said without enthusiasm. He and Bobby grabbed up suitcases and carry-ons as they crossed the living room and headed out the front door.

I never saw Mike Kim leave, so he must have gone outside before we finished talking and that unnerved me a little. Could he have overheard us? Nah. Hobbes notices things like that. He has eyes in the back of his head. He would have said something if Kim were eavesdropping. At least, I wanted to believe that.

Farzimah dropped down onto the same chaise lounge Hobbes had vacated, crossing her ankles and leaning her head back to stare at the blue green pool. She looked tired.

"You don't like goin' to the airport to see him off?" I asked.

"No, because that makes it really seem like he's gone. If I say goodbye from here, then I can pretend he's just out, rehearsing or shopping and it's not so final."

"Farzimah, ask him to marry you."

She stared at me open mouthed. I think I was as surprised as she was to hear that come out of my mouth, but now that it was said, there was no turning back.

"I can't," she said simply, back to abusing her fingers.

"Why not?

"Good girls--in my country, girls don't. And I know that's being hypocritical because Allah knows I'm nothing like what a good girl from Kharistan should be, but…I want to be, y'know?" She had tears in her obsidian eyes. "It gets so hard to straddle the line. To be one thing for my relatives and another thing entirely for Miles. So I stopped being the princess so long ago…and all this is bringing it back--not just the threats and all--but the coronation dinner, my brother being crowned king--I'll have to be a princess again. I want…"

"You just want to live in that fairy tale world where only you and Miles exist," I finished, knowing exactly what she meant. When I was dating Casey O'Claire, I used to pretend that I really was somebody else, not a two time convicted thief living a lie just to be with such a desirable woman. Sometimes the fantasy was so strong, I'd start to forget prison and everything else, so that when reality slammed me in the face, it was a shock.

"Yes." She pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around her folded legs, resting her chin on her blue jean clad knees. "Kharistan is beautiful. I went there a few years ago to a funeral for a relative I'd never even met. It's not desert like some Westerners think all that area is. Lots of hills, cypress trees and cedars…and they have market places full of old women, bent in two from life, what you can see of their faces wizened like apple dolls."

"Women wear veils there?"

"Not really, not anymore. We're a progressive country, so the young women dress half--jeans and a covering gown like a chador--only worn open like a duster coat. It's kind of a farce, really. But the older women still wear veils." She stood, gesturing that I should follow her. "C'mon. I want to show you something so you'll understand…I guess we're stuck together for a few days, hmm? Since it's spring vacation and no school for a week, you'll have to endure all those errands I've been saddled with."

"Like what?" I asked, following her up the stairs to the second floor of the house.

"I have a lot of things to do related to the dinner--and a few royal functions I'll have to attend. Kharib and Avraham--Mountain Man--will be with me then, you won't have to suffer through that kind of boredom. I know how you felt about Chemistry class."

"And I thought I was being subtle." I laughed.

'Subtlety is not your strong point." She laughed as well, her mood lighter than it had been by the pool.

The stairs flowed into a wide landing that was big enough to be a comfortable room. Furnished with lots of low leather sofas and chairs it featured a huge entertainment center complete with a mini kitchen for those times when you wanted some popcorn to go with a movie and were too lazy to walk one flight down to the main kitchen.

"Stay here and I'll show some things from Kharistan," Farzimah commanded and disappeared into her bedroom. She came back shortly bearing a large box and began to unpack it onto the coffee table. First out was a photo album. "I took these pictures when I was in high school."

There was the market place she'd described, small booths over flowing with fascinating foodstuffs and hand woven baskets interspersed with blankets spread on the ground selling American style watches and electrical equipment. An old woman sat on one blanket wearing a flowing black veil that covered her hair and reached to her shoulders. Attached to that was a small square of fabric across her mouth and nose, but not the eyes. Instead, elaborate red embroidery crawled all around the edges of the opening spiraling down a narrow bridge that separated the eyes and ended just over the bridge of the nose, so she appeared to be wearing a beautiful mask for some exotic ball. The chador type garment she wore was also black with red embroidery around the hem. Her hands, holding out some piece of fruit that looked like a large green apple, were covered with intricate curving lines drawn with henna. I'd seen American teen-age girls with their hands and arms decorated like that, but this was the real thing.

Other pictures showed dark eyed men in knee length pale blue gowns over cotton pants, like comfortable pajamas, kneeling on mats facing East for their prayers. Each picture pulled me into the mystique of the country, even ones of modern buildings in the capital with Farzimah's family in front, all lined up from oldest to youngest. Then there were photos of the countryside, low rolling hills covered with poppies and the plant saffron comes from. The landscape was varied; large, lush trees overshadowing small dwellings with wide windows and low ceilings. Other places showed the arid, high desert similar to the area around San Diego with scrub oak and low brush. I was struck by the beauty of the country and really wanted to go there to see more of Kharistan for myself.

I was so immersed in the photos I hadn't noticed that Farzimah had left, but when she came out of her room again, I was stunned. She'd transformed into an Arabian enchantress, Scharazad or Princess Jasmine without the implied sexiness of the Disney creation with her bared midriff. Farzimah's outfit was far more elaborate than the woman's in the market, but along the same lines. Her chador was a delicate white, trimmed with elaborate gold embroidery not just around the hem but festooned all over the floor length garment so that she shimmered in the light like a piece of jewelry. Her veil, if that is what it could be called, was made entirely of gold, like the chain mail of some ancient knight, only on her it wasn't in the least warrior-like. The gold links were threaded with semi-precious stones and my larcenous heart priced the head gear at many thousands of dollars. Her face was partially obscured by a veil of even more finely made gold mesh and the tiny chain that hung from the forehead part to link the veil over the bridge of her nose was embedded with diamonds. The whole thing must have weighed a ton and jingled like tiny chimes when Farzimah walked towards me. She'd rimmed her eyes with some thick black substance and had gold rings on both hands linked by chains to heavy gold cuff bracelets.

"Wow, that's incredible."

"You can probably see why I don't wear this very often." She held out her arms and turned around slowly like a runway model. "It's just for ceremony, I have slightly less flashy ones for every day."

"Thank you for sharing all this with me," I said honestly, enthralled by the allure of the place. "I can see why you love it."

"Do I really love it? Cause, I think if I did, I'd want to go back." Farzimah carefully unhooked the veil covering her mouth and took the whole chain mail helmet off. "I want the best for my people, I really do. It hurts that girls can barely read and in some small villages, really do have to wear a veil all the time. But I was five when I left, it's not me anymore."

"You feel American."

"I am an American, and I'm afraid of being sucked back into the whole mind set. My mother, bless her heart, wants the best for me and thinks I should marry some Kharistan boy. But I love Miles…"

"So?"

"Ask him to marry me, just like that." She puffed out her cheeks, playing with the edges of the headdress before shoving it away. "That's so hard. I've come a long way from the timid little thing I used to be, but…"

"When I first met you I thought you were shy, but it's really elegant reserve," I complimented.

"Why, thank you, sir," she laughed, using a Southern belle accent.

"Farzimah, Hobbes was wondering…" _Yeah, lob it onto Hobbes' shoulders so if she's in anyway offended, it's his fault._

"Hmm?" she repacked the box, handling small pieces of jewelry and ornate carved figures with reverence.

"Since we pretty much know that Mike Kim is with the KFF, and Amin's friend Tayeb most likely is, too, that means they've got two members of your family under surveillance at all times. Do you have any reason to suspect any of Amahl's friends? And I'm beginning to think we should lay this whole thing out for him, since he's the ultimate target."

"Oh, my…" Farzimah sighed. "I'll have to think about it. But you're right, we have to talk to him, which may be difficult this week. He's going to be in counsel with advisors all week, since there aren't any classes. And Friday will be a mad house."

"He needs to know."

"I agree, I'll call him now. Let me go change out of this costume."

Monday, Farzimah and I played couch potatoes all morning watching Miles make his way from one talk show to another. Armed with an impressive array of breakfast pastries, and a thermos of coffee for me, we had particular fun checking out which clothes he'd changed for each interview.

On 'Today', with Katie Couric, he went for sexy rock star, wearing leather pants and a purple silk shirt, and they showed a clip of him singing 'Sandstorm' from a recent concert. He was chatty and poised on 'The View' which, in New York, is filmed around the same time as 'Rosie', so he must have changed clothes in the cab 'cuz he was now wearing a blue suede shirt with the leather pants.

On the West Coast, 'Rosie' is shown mid afternoon, but he still had the on the same purple silk shirt from 'Today' plus had added a leather vest. He flirted outrageously with O'Donnell and sang 'Empty Rooms' live to a swooning crowd. The coup de gras was when he had copies of the special 'Sandstorm' CD for the entire audience. He then went on to discuss his charity, with the phone number printed on a crawl across the screen.

"I didn't know you were sending the new CD with him!" I grinned, "Mike must be starting to blow a gasket."

"I packed them myself so that he wouldn't find out." Farzimah sparkled with joy at the underhanded trick.

"How'd you get enough copies? It's not even out in the stores yet."

Farzimah put a finger on the side of her nose like Paul Newman in 'The Sting', and winked. "I've got connections in the biz."

Between chat shows and watching an old episode of 'The Donna Reed Show' on a local station, Farzimah tried to get through to her brother for the umpteenth time. He finally called back to coordinate a time to talk to us, but I didn't want to tell him anything dangerous over the phone. Thus, I'd have to wait until Wednesday to meet the future king of Kharistan.

I played dutiful agent and logged in with The Official and Eberts, but there wasn't much new to report. We were kind of in limbo, since we didn't know what was going to happen at the dinner concert and that limited how much we could prepare. Without any actual evidence of a threat from the KFF, we couldn't arrest them, but The Official was posting tails on a few of the members, even though we still didn't have a legitimate list of their real names. Eberts rang off with a reminder that Claire wanted me to come by for a check up. I swear that women has nothing better to do but think up ways to torture me and draw blood. She's part vampire.

Since we had most of the afternoon and evening before Miles was back on the small screen, I decided now was as good a time as any to put Claire and Farzimah together to discuss the gland. Maybe I could make a run over to Starbucks while they chatted and they'd get so involved, Claire would forget the blood letting for one day.

Luckily the Soledad dreams had tapered off more quickly than usual, or at least that's what I wanted to believe, and I'd slept better the previous night. So, I looked damn good, if I don't say so myself, striding into the Keep in a mustard yellow t-shirt and orange pants. My hair had even co-operated and stood up majestically just the way I liked.

"Darien, and Farzimah!" Claire crowed, turning away from the computer program we'd interrupted. "Lovely to see you, and I just watched Miles on 'Rosie'. He was being rather naughty, if I don't say so."

"You don't know the half of it," I said, and Farzimah and I filled Claire in on Kim's Machiavellian managerial style.

"Well, I must say, you'll all be glad to be rid of him, but it'll be hell for the rest of the week, unless I miss my guess," Claire harrumphed.

"Are you coming to the birthday concert?" Farzimah asked sweetly.

"Am I invited?" Claire flushed with excitement, her eyes sparkling, and I wished Hobbes were here to see how pretty she looked.

"Since Darien and Hobbes will be there, of course. I don't think Bobby would have a very good time, otherwise." Farzimah grinned. "I saw you two together at the zoo."

"That was a smashing concert and it'd been a long time since I'd seen the orangutans," Claire confessed.

"Hobbes took you to see orangutans?" I asked in disbelief. Not exactly a romantic setting in my book.

"During the interval when Miles changed costumes. I just love primates." Claire nodded with a devilish look in her blue-green eyes. She gave herself a little shake, focusing on Farzimah. "So you're interested in the Quicksilver gland?"

"Yes, very."

"Well, much of the molecular structure, origins and construct of the gland are highly classified, I'm afraid."

"Oh, while that's all fascinating, I'm sure, I really want to know about the stressors on Darien's body. How does his liver handle such a toxic load? And is there an impact on the heart due to the extra fluid carried in his veins? Is there a danger of congestive heart failure if fluids built up, and how does he flush it out of his system? Is his urine silver colored?" Farzimah's questions were tumbling out so quickly I was having a hard time keeping up but the last one finished me off.

"Ladies, I'm just going out for coffee now…" I started for the door at all speed.

"Get back in here, Mr. Fawkes," Claire used her Queen Mum voice and I froze. "You're not getting out of a physical that easily."

"But Claire, you took blood on Friday."

"Bully for remembering. No blood today, just a check up. You were shot a few weeks ago." She held out her hand for my wrist. When I relented, she pressed her fingers delicately into the radial artery, taking my pulse.

"And the wound is all healed up," I added sulkily.

"See what I have to put up with?" Claire asked rhetorically. Farzimah was laughing silently but knew me better than to comment. "In answer to your excellent questions, I keep a detailed log of Darien's vitals and other statistics, and do a physical about once a month. It used to be even more often, but things are a bit more stable now and he's had the gland for over two years without obvious strain on his body, but there are more subtle signs."

"There are?" I whined.

She took my open mouth as the opportunity to poke a tongue depressor inside and peered around with a tiny flashlight.

"His blood pressure is often higher than I'd like," Claire continued, sounding a lot like one of Farzimah's premed professors, and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around my arm, pumping the little bulb until my fingers were tingling. She made a slight tsk at the reading but just wrote it down in her notes. Poking an errant blond hair behind her ear, Claire picked up her lecture, "he succumbs to respiratory infections far more easily than I'd expected. I gave him the flu shot and pneumonia vaccine, but he has frequent colds and yes, there is more than the usual fluid build up when he has upper airway infections."

"Very interesting," Farzimah breathed, hanging on to Dr. Claire's every word.

"Not to me!" I groaned. I really didn't want to know what Kevin had done to me in the same of science.

"I am concerned about the long term effects, and have considered putting him on short term doses of diuretics to reduce the fluid load to his heart, but so far it hasn't been necessary. Bearing in mind other observations, a biopsy of his liver would be something for the immediate future, if his levels elevate above normal, but again, so far, his body is handling the toxin better than I'd ever believed."

"Toxin?" I echoed.

"Quicksilver is not a natural substance to your molecular make-up, Darien," Claire explained while doing the usual reflex checks with a small rubber hammer. My knee flew up so abruptly it nearly hit her in the chin and she backed away with a smirk. After writing more notes on her clipboard, she glanced up at me. "Even though your brother used bio-synthetic substances to manufacture the gland and other things…" she was alluding to the damned female Bigfoot hormones, "this isn't something a normal liver is used to dealing with. Your body chemistry is not and never will be normal. Certainly you knew that. I've said it before."

"Yeah, I just never paid a whole lot of attention," I admitted. It was bad enough having to deal with premature invisibility whenever I had a rush of adrenaline, even without the whole problem of the madness. Now that the madness had been dealt with, I'd wanted to believe that I was out of danger, but I guess Kevin's gift was the kind that just kept on giving. "Could the gland kill me?"

"Sweetheart," Claire sighed and Farzimah suddenly found the piranha tank fascinating. "I don't know, truly."

"But I probably won't make it to my dotage?"

Claire let out a pent-up breath, her face sympathetic, and the last thing I wanted was sympathy, "No, Darien, I don't think so. That's why I want to keep such a close watch on you. Not to pester you unmercifully, but to keep you healthy."

"Crap," I whispered, my belly twisting into abstract art. "Are we done here?"

"Darien," Claire started but I held up a hand to prevent any more unpleasant news.

Her words had pared me to the core. I'd always known I lived on the edge and wouldn't live long--having been raped on my 21st birthday, plus various prison sentences leads to the occasional thoughts of suicide and death. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I'd started to think maybe I'd beaten the odds after all this time. That maybe working for the Agency and having a real job mitigated what had come before.

Why I had harbored any hope at all was a curious thing, after all, being an 'agent' probably didn't rate high on any job safety lists, but at least it had represented a kind of security. Now I didn't even have that. I kind of missed the madness, after all. That had been the ultimate edge, a sword of Damocles hanging over my head at all times, just waiting for the most inopportune moment to strike. And every time I'd escaped, an invisible Harry Houdini, just wriggling free of the danger at the very last second. I wondered idly when my last seconds would hit and would I realize ahead of time, or would the world just end, in one big bang? Isn't that how it had begun? The big bang theory, with the end of Darien Fawkes, as we know him.

"Farzimah? You can talk to Claire all you want, but I need to get outta here for a while."

"Darien, I didn't mean to start anything," she said, looking stricken.

"You didn't start anything, Princess, my brother did all this," I said and headed blindly for the huge metal sliding door. Good thing Claire wasn't monitoring my vitals right at that moment, because even I could tell my heart was racing and my blood pressure was through the roof.

Eberts cornered me when I came out of the restroom, his face grimly satisfied. "The Doctor told me you were in the building." He held up a sheet of paper. "I've confirmed Mike Kim's identity. He's related to people very high in the North Korean government. Is this the man you saw with him the other night?"

"Yeah, I think so." I studied the grainy picture printed off some computer web site. "Looks like him, or Mike Kim."

"Joseph Kim, a member of North Korean's version of the CIA." Eberts puffed up with pride, "It took a long night of breaking through encryptions and firewalls, but I found it. I also found the names of many of the KFF."

 _Crap, just what I needed right now._ But at least it gave me something else to focus on.

I raised my fist, touching it to his, then raised my thumb in a salute, "You the man, Ebes. Thanks."

"The Doctor said she was concerned with your well being. Is there any way I can be of service while Robert is out of state?"

"No, man, but thanks. I'll keep you in the loop if I learn anything else. We have a meeting with the future King of Kharistan on Wednesday, so if you dig up anything else, get it to me pronto." I hunched my shoulders. "And don't worry about me, it's just the usual monumental pile of crap I'm climbing over. Like Icarus, I persevere."

"I think Icarus flew into the sun." Eberts frowned.

"Is he the one?" I asked remotely. "I meant the guy with the great big ball."

"Indiana Jones?"

This was beginning to take the shape of some of the more bizarre conversations I'd had with Hobbes. "That's the one." I sketched a wave, making for the door. Maybe Eberts was right after all, the big ball was rolling fast and about to crush me flat.

Take-out Indonesian food and a pound box of See's finest chocolates were the provisions for our late night TV watching. Farzimah sighed with pleasure when Jay Leno announced Miles, and I could see the love pouring off her when he appeared on screen.

I wish I could find someone like that who'd wait in the wings for me. I remembered the first time I'd seen Farzimah, standing just outside Miles' dressing room, happy to be the one he came home to, and secure in the knowledge that he always would. She had the strength to be a ruler of her country and the intelligence to guide others into a better future, but that wasn't where her heart lay. She truly was a 21st century woman, able to have it all and content enough not to need it.

Miles had changed into what amounted to biker gear, a black leather short waisted jacket with lots of zippers, a dark green muscle shirt and jeans so tight Farzimah blushed. He and Leno had an easy rapport and started right in discussing the current state of affairs in Kharistan. I could only imagine what Kim was doing backstage. Hopefully, Hobbes was keeping him on a tight rein and didn't have to pull out his piece or anything.

"Much fun as it is, y'think it's wise for Mighty Man to be baiting Mike like this?" I asked, trying to keep my interest in the here and now. The afternoon trip to the Keep had thrown me for a loop and I found my mind drifting out every once in a while.

"This was Miles' idea, not mine." Farzimah munched thoughtfully on a jimmy sprinkled chocolate. "He's forcing Mike's hand, I think, because he wants him out."

"It's not going to work, because Kim has to stay around until Friday. I'll bet he has orders." I hadn't yet told her about the latest with Kim and his brother. "Besides, we need to keep Mike as close as possible to ferret out as much info as we can."

"Keep your friends close but your enemies closer?" she quoted.

"Exactly." I liked a girl who could quote with the best of them.

By the Kilborn show, Miles in his element, and anything Kim might have said to him in the cab ride over between tapings must have gone in one ear and out the other. He chatted about the upcoming coronation dinner, teasing Kilborn for not being invited. So much for keeping a low profile.

My dreams were full of dark, ominous figures intent on mayhem, sometimes to me, and sometimes to Miles and Farzimah. I was glad to wake after one that seemed to go on and on endlessly in the way of nightmares. I lay gasping in the guestroom of Miles' house, trying to sort out the demon images and failing. A sense of gloom descended on me that Friday was going to be bad, and I dreaded the rest of the week.

I sat in the floor-to-ceiling window on the second floor of that ocean-side house and watched the sky lighten. Since the sun rose behind me, out of the East, I couldn't see the magnificent display of gilt, rose and pale blue that usually welcomes the day but that was just fine with me. Instead, I watched the shadow of the house lengthen across the sand until it hit the oncoming surf. Seagulls wheeled in the wind, diving into the waves to catch tiny fish for food. Somehow, the encroaching darkness stretching out to the endless ocean and animal life killing smaller prey for survival exactly suited my mood.

As Farzimah had predicted, her week was taken up with chores. She had to meet with committees involved with every facet of the upcoming dinner concert and also the benefit concert. First there was a last minute fitting for a gown to wear under her Kharistan costume, and then a long session with the henna artist who decorated not only Farzimah's palms with swirly designs and delicate flowers but also her arms and the small of her back.

The artist, who wore a red dot in the middle of her forehead like that singer Gwen Stefani, wanted to put some designs on my hand too, but I put her off. That whole thing's a girly fashion, isn't it? In the end, Farzimah persuaded me to have a small 'tattoo' drawn on the bottom of my right foot, for luck, she said. It was a Kharistani custom for men to have them there, so what did I know? I needed all the luck I could muster.

Miles and Hobbes came home with a seething Mike Kim. I was almost sure I spotted smoke coming out of his ears.

All the newspapers had gone crazy for Kharistan, it seemed, putting all Mike's dire predictions of rock stars who courted politics to shame. Kharistan was the hot new topic; especially since the crown prince lived right here in San Diego and was about to be crowned king.

"How was New York, man?" I asked Hobbes when we finally escaped the crush at Miles'.

Sherida was over the moon with all the positive publicity and wanted pictures to capture the mood. Since Joe Lincoln came over to set up his photographer in the in-house studio and watch Miles rehearse, the house was full of people. Farzimah had a day of family business to attend to and had taken two of her guards with her.

"Tense," Hobbes answered. "Just a joy to spend hours with Kim in all those green rooms while Verbage yammered on about every subject he'd been warned off."

"I kinda wondered if you had to pull your gun on him," I joked.

"Miles or Kim? I considered it about the time ol' Mike was about to climb the walls at Leno's," Hobbes confessed with a leer. "Didn't ever get a chance to go out and hunt up some of my old haunts."

"No Nathan's hot dog?" I tried to sound sympathetic, but sorta smug that he hadn't had any more fun than I'd had in the last few days.

"No kosher bagels, no real New Yawk style pizza." He shrugged. "Guess I'll have to live with the stuff they make here. Let's go over to the 'Chicago Pie' and get a Midwestern version."

"Make it to go and we can eat it at my place while I bring you up to date on what Eberts dug up." I climbed into the front of the van, riding 'shotgun'. "Didja get to meet all those other stars in the green rooms?"

"Susan Sarandon talked to me personally." Hobbes preened. "Got Vin Diesal's autograph."

"Man, I know you fixed that coin toss," I moped. Okay, he did have more fun than I did.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Driving up to the gates of the Abdullah family estate, I finally felt like I was about to meet royalty. I had complete respect and admiration for Farzimah, but I'd met her under very un-princess like circumstances, so I had a hard time thinking of her in the same league as England's Queen Elizabeth, despite the gorgeous gold and white chador she'd shown me. So, I was the slightest bit nervous when we stepped out of the car in front of a looming three story manse in the ritziest section of San Diego. A uniformed butler let us into the house, welcoming Farzimah with a solemn bow.

With the ease of someone in her own home, Farzimah urged us all to spread out on the sleek brocade furniture and went in search of her elder brother, calling his name like a teen-ager answering the phone.

While we were waiting, a tiny woman dressed nearly identically to the one in Farzimah's pictures came in with a tray of dates, dried fruit and nuts. Amin followed behind with an oddly shaped teakettle and cups. "Nice t'see you guys again. This is my Auntie, she's the best cook any where in the world."

The woman, who couldn't possibly top five feet even in high heels, ducked her head, acting embarrassed, but her black eyes were twinkling merrily.

"And every few months I have to come back home just to get some of her chicken couscous. It's the only way I can survive Berkeley," Amin moaned in a most pitiful voice, grabbing her hand for support. "It sustains me."

Chuckling, Auntie kissed his hand through her veil and shuffled out, her chador so long it dragged on the carpet.

"Think that'll convince her?" Amin asked deviously.

"You're in, kid, it's chicken and couscous for dinner unless I'm very much mistaken," Hobbes agreed.

Farzimah came back in the room with an older, heavier version of Amin. Amahl wasn't quite as tall as his younger brother, but he must spend some time in the gym cause he had some serious muscle going on for an engineering geek. We were just in the midst of introductions and explaining why Miles hadn't come along to see his good friend when Tayeb poked his head in.

"Amin, you coming or not?"

"I didn't know Tayeb was here," Farzimah's hissed at her younger brother, her voice unnaturally pitched. But she got it together before turning around with a gracious smile. "Tayeb, Amin neglected to mention you were visiting, too. Want some snacks with us?"

"No, we're going out to buy some gunpowder. Tayeb's teaching me to make fireworks. We're gonna put on a show after Miles sings on Friday." Amin explained, swiping a handful of dates before getting up. "For a tribute to big brother here."

"That wasn't discussed in advance," Farzimah argued. I knew she was largely in charge of the whole shebang, so an unplanned addition could play havoc with the schedule.

"What kind of fireworks?" Hobbes asked with suspicion.

"The usual." Tayeb regarded Hobbes with a bland stare. "I've put on a few Fourth of July shows in my time. I know how to rig a safe explosive. Plus Roman candles and little rockets, stuff like that."

"We can't just have fireworks without a city permit," Farzimah fumed.

"No problem, Sis, Tayeb has connections," Amin assured, throwing an arm around his buddy. Tayeb looked uncomfortable with the close proximity and moved away slightly, ostensibly reaching for a few nuts.

"If there are any difficulties, we can arrange something else, your highness," Tayeb directed at Amahl, and I noticed he'd never once actually looked at Farzimah.

"Make some up." Amahl shrugged. "If we can't use them then, we'll find another time."

"How much knowledge does that kid have with explosives?" Hobbes asked aloud once Amin and Tayeb had left.

"I'm not sure, but he said he's done this kind of thing before." The future king sounded impossibly naïve. "Do you consider him a threat? He's a friend of the family."

"That's exactly why we've come, your highness," I said, not exactly sure what to call him. Besides the dates were sticking to my teeth. I took a hasty gulp of tea to wash them down and ended up with a gummy wad at the back of my throat. Hobbes had to whack me on the back when I started coughing.

"Please, call me Amahl. I find it sort of unnerving to be referred to as your highness," Amahl admitted.

"Get used to it," Farzimah teased in a singsong voice.

"Believe me, I'm trying." He laughed. "So, what is this all about?"

"We have reason to believe someone will try to kill you at the dinner on Friday." Hobbes put our cards on the table, explaining the whole hypothesis with expedience.

Unfortunately, without any solid facts to back us up, there was a definite air of paranoia in the tale. I wasn't at all surprised to see a look of skepticism on Amahl's handsome face, especially after we inferred that someone in his cabinet might be a double agent.

"I trust my advisors implicitly," he huffed.

"Is there anyone new?" Hobbes pressed. "Anyone whose views don't completely mesh with yours?"

"To be truthful, many of the old guard aren't comfortable with my so called 'radical' ideas, but I feel we need to move Kharistan into the 21st century as quickly as possible. We're already hopelessly behind. We must lure American educated Kharistanis back to the homeland to jump-start our industry and computer know-how. And to do that, we can't embrace the old customs but meld them into a new era of prosperity and freedom." He took a deep breath, warming to his subject. "There are only a few of my people who whole-heartedly support my proposals, but most of the rest will come around once I'm firmly on the throne next year. I know that this will be an uphill battle, and a rough year until I finish my thesis."

"So, everyone around you is willing to follow you?" Hobbes questioned.

"As far as I know." He frowned, his eyebrows dipping down over his eyes like the Wise Old Owl in Bambi.

"You thought of something?" I asked. It was the first time I'd been able to speak without choking on date particles.

"Sommatra's brother."

"Sommatra?" Farzimah echoed, her voice raising to shrill in just under a second. "They still expect you to marry her?"

"Our fathers signed a pact at her birth, Far." Amahl didn't look at all happy about it.

"Have you seen her since she was five?" Farzimah jumped up in annoyance.

"You know that would be forbidden, sis."

"In the 19th century, but you just got finished saying you want Kharistan to march into the 21st, and you're agreeing to an arranged marriage?" Farzimah fumed. "This is outrageous, Amahl! When I met her, she was fat as a house and nearsighted, but her nasty ol' gran wouldn't allow a girl to wear glasses!"

"People do change, Farzimah, and I will not have you discussing my intended in that manner, is it understood?"

The King had spoken, and Farzimah knew it. She backed down with tight lips.

"This Sommatra's brother?" Hobbes sat forward like a beagle on the hunt. "You've had words?"

"We have e-mailed. He came over at the winter break to arrange the dowry price and discuss when the wedding should take place," Amahl said slowly. "I have dated before, although not a great deal, since I was concentrating on my studies and I wasn't totally comfortable with not seeing her before the wedding."

"He was old school?" I put in.

"Mohammed Nazeem acts like he was born one hundred years ago," he stated.

"So does his sister," Farzimah added in an aside, then stuffed a sweetmeat into her mouth, chewing furiously.

"And he's still agreeing to the marriage?" Hobbes inquired.

"He believes his father's signature is binding," Amahl answered. " I…I said I needed to meet Sommatra, and there was a loud disagreement. Nazeem was very vocal in his distrust of Americans. He finally agreed that he would bring Sommatra over to attend the dinner for my birthday so I can meet with her before hand, obviously with a chaperone in attendance, and if there really is a conflict, then I could pay him $100,000 to nullify the contract."

"Highway robbery!" Farzimah exploded.

"I don't have that kind of money at my disposal, and I'm sure the Kharistani people would not take kindly to their king using taxes to pay off his bride's family," Amahl sighed, and it was in that small sigh that I knew that there once must have been a real girlfriend, but he'd broken off with her. "But, I don't see a way out."

"What if this Mohammed is one of the opposition?" Hobbes speculated.

"In league with these Kharistan Freedom Fighters?" Amahl grimaced. "I don't see how that could be to anyone's favor. Communism has proven to be an unworkable solution in nearly every country. Russia collapsed, as did East Germany."

"They get into power and they can do whatever they want," Hobbes answered. "Once a government is overthrown it's real easy to set up a puppet leader for a little while and when the people are really dissatisfied, up pops some charismatic leader who slides into a dictatorship without anybody noticin' until it's too late."

"Why would Mohammed Nazeem agree to letting Amahl see Sommatra if he doesn't really want the marriage to go ahead?" Farzimah asked.

"Because no matter what happens at the meeting, he'll disagree to it and cause a scandal," I shook my head at the hubris of the guy. "Then he'll go back to Kharistan with stories about how the future king spurned his sister, maybe embellishing it with a little rape…"

"I would never…" Amahl protested.

"You already said the country is in upheaval, that would really throw even your most ardent supporters into a tailspin." Hobbes nodded. "If you were killed on Friday…"

"No, better yet, both he and Sommatra killed on Friday," I finished. "Nazeem goes back to Kharistan with a revenge motive. None of your family would ever be accepted, and your progressive ideas would be tainted goods. Easy enough for the North Koreans to put somebody in and then start pumping up the oil until there isn't anything under the topsoil but ants."

"Bring me concrete proof," Amahl said in a dead voice.

"Here's everything we know so far and we're learning more every day." Hobbes handed over the report we'd prepared.

Well, actually, Eberts had printed it up, collated it and put it into an attractive folder, but I watched.

"Now all we need is a link between all these separate factions," Hobbes mused. "We got Mike Kim and his brother with the KFF, but there's no proof yet that Tayeb could be connected in with them and now this Nazeem guy…"

"I'm scared," Farzimah said in a tight voice. "I don't want to have this stupid dinner anymore."

"We cannot cancel at this late date," Amahl spoke up, once again the future king. "There are dignitaries coming, heads of state--the media."

"Plus Sommatra," Farzimah snarked with a curl of her lip.

"When did you actually see her?" I asked, just for a little lighter subject matter.

"We're the same age, when I was sixteen and went back for the funeral. When I took those pictures you saw--so that would be in '93."

"You didn't show me any pictures of her," I pointed out.

"Not likely," Farzimah sneered.

"So maybe she's changed?" Amahl asked hopefully.

"Maybe so." Farzimah's expression softened, obviously understanding her brother's distress. She had chosen her own path and being the female in the family, she didn't have the expectations he had to face. Amahl was starting down a rough road and I didn't envy him one bit. "I just wish you'd told me about all of this before." Farzimah took her older brother's hand, giving it a little swing.

"A king keeps his own counsel, my sister," Amahl said formally. "What's the old expression? The buck stops here."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, on Thursday, with one day to go before the big event, we knew who the players were but not how they fit onto the chess board, much less what they intended to do or how they would go about doing it. Sorta like playing that preschool game where you stick your hand into a box and feel around for something familiar. Feels like an assassination plot, sounds like one, but what does it look like?

We had Agency personnel crawling all over the chosen banquet room at the hotel, bumping into secret service and Abdullah family retainers, as well as Kharistan militia and hotel security. There were some really big wigs invited to the family birthday and nobody wanted WWIII started just before the cake was cut. This place was going to be bottled up tighter'n Fort Knox by the time the first course was served Friday night. Hobbes and Eberts were tracking down every lead we had, renewed with fresh vigor now that we had Nazeem's name added to the list.

I was to stick close to Farzimah and Miles, which meant tagging along to endless meetings, another interview for The-Up-and-Coming-Pop-Sensation-of-the-New-Millennium, and picking up the centerpiece for the main table. Miles had a rehearsal in his own studio surrounded by his own band and a couple of Abdullah guards for good measure, so we figured he was safe enough to be left 'alone'.

"Our national symbol is the eagle, like the U.S.," Farzimah explained. "Except our bird is in flight." She led the way into a glassmaker's shop, pausing to admire several examples of the artist's work. There were intricately crafted animals of every sort, including frogs who seemed to be dancing like ballerinas, sea creatures caught in mid-motion as if they would swim off once you turned away and horses so alive their eyes flashed fire. I had to touch the curling mane of one bucking stallion to assure myself it was actually glass and not hair.

"Miss Abdullah!" The glassmaker was a tiny Asian woman with gnarled hands that seemed incapable of capturing such incredible beauty. "You have come for the eagle."

"Yes, Mrs. Lee." Farzimah grinned, totally excited. "Can I see it or have you packed it up already?"

"It is packed, yes." Mrs. Lee had the stilted accent of one born in another country, but her last name was so typically Asian I felt paranoid for suspecting her of Korean origins. "But I have a photo, see?"

She pushed a Polaroid across the counter. The sculpture was magnificent, a huge eagle with outspread wings, eyes boring downward as if scanning the ground below for prey.

"Wow, that thing looks real," I complimented.

"This eagle watches our people and keeps them safe. Amahl will be his human counterpart." Farzimah sighed, nodding her satisfaction to the little glassmaker. "Which is why all these machinations are so chilling. This should be such a happy time."

"You not like?" Mrs. Lee stared at the two of us.

"No, no, it's wonderful," Farzimah assured. "We just have a some difficulties with the banquet, nothing to do with your amazing work. Thank you so much."

"Luckily you have big strong man to help transport this. It very heavy." She beckoned me into the back of the shop. "I have dolly. C'mon, you bring it out for the Princess, eh?"

It was heavy and I spent the rest of the day playing pack mule. _Carry this, Darien. Darien, you're tall, can you reach that? Hey, Darien, lend a hand, here will you?_

So much for being a top government agent with a legitimate super power, all I needed was to be strong and tall. No thinking required.

I started wondering if Bobby, who was strong, but not very tall, was making any headway in the research department but it wasn't until I was taking a beer and KFC break late afternoon that my cell phone buzzed me in the leg.

"Fawkes, you would not believe what Eberts and I dug up," Hobbes said without preamble.

"Should I come down? Need me to stake out an address? Maybe confront some crazed gunman?"

"You're bored?" Bobby's phone voice was amused.

"I hang with these guys much longer and I'm in danger of permanently turning into a roadie. I'll have to let my hair grow long and stringy, wear a bandana over my forehead and old heavy metal band t-shirts and start smoking Turkish cigs. What'd you dig up?" I groused.

"Tayeb Parvin is a cousin to Mohammed Nazeem, Sommatra's brother," he announced smugly. "And Nazeem works in the foreign relations department of the Kharistan government. He's responsible for dealings with…"

"North Korea," I finished for him, feeling a tightness settle in my chest. This could be really bad and the black mood I'd been fighting descended like a smothering blanket. "Do they have contact with any of the KFF?"

"Nazeem can't have avoided working with Jin Park, the guy whose money backs the group and that links all the players together in one nice box."

"But, Hobbes, we still don't know what they plan to do!" I groused.

"Yeah." His explosive sigh sounded like a bomb blast over the phone. "What'd you do today?"

"Helped out. Played gofer, but man, the centerpiece for the main table is awesome. The eagle must have a wingspan of four feet. Weighed a friggin' ton, too."

"Listen, unless there's anything new, I'll meet you tomorrow at noon at the hotel. We're on duty until this whole circus ends, and I'm not letting those freedom fighters ruin this for Amahl. He's decent people and deserves better."

I flipped my cell phone closed, pretending to be Jim Kirk on an uncharted planet having just conferred with 'Bones' about the exotic flora and fauna. Boy, what I wouldn't do to have a tricorder about now. Those doohickeys could figure out anything. Maybe Spock could untangle the plot of what we had to go up against, but I'm not sure even his amazing brainpower could handle the staggering amount of characters in this action thriller.

Nazeem and Tayeb were related, huh? Mohammed Nazeem was using his sister to further a political plot like something out of Shakespeare. How long ago had this whole thing begun and who was the mastermind behind it? Who would ultimately be in power? There must be some schmuck just waiting in the wings for Amahl to take a nosedive into his hummus. It couldn't possibly be sweet Amin, and I doubted it was Tayeb or any of the college geeks from the KFF, so there were players we hadn't encountered yet. Like an iceberg, more was hidden than what we could see.

I stayed the night again at Miles' place, but sleep was elusive and I finally got up to find some leftovers and a TV. Nothing better than some infomercial about hair products at two a.m. to relax a guy enough to sleep. It wasn't even Soledad reruns disturbing my slumber. Instead, I had a repeat of the one where Miles and Farzimah were being terrorized, only this time they got killed in several gruesome ways while I watched. Just peachy.

After rooting some chocolate cake out of the fridge, I started to go back upstairs to curl up on one of the leather sofas and watch the boob tube, but something compelled me to poke my head into Miles' private recording studio. He was there, strumming quietly on an old battered guitar. I stood watching, and listening, for a long time before he noticed me. Smiling, Miles beckoned me in before scribbling something on a sheet of music paper.

"You can't sleep either?" I asked by way of greeting. I held out some of the cake, but he pointed to an empty plate that still held chocolatey crumbs and shook his head, still writing. "I don't wanna disturb you if you're in the zone."

"It's just about done, just noodling with the bridge." Miles shook his head, humming a snatch of tune. He played the same notes on the guitar and quickly erased what he'd just written, changing around some of the notations. "In fact, I think it's done."

"Good, cause we both should probably get some shut eye. Gonna be a wild day tomorrow."

"Once this is all over, Farzimah and me are going to the islands, and I can't wait."

"Yeah, I remember you mentioning that." I finished the cake, licking icing off the fork. "D'you really know Jimmy Buffet?"

"We're spending a weekend at his house." Miles blushed to the roots of his blond, just shorn locks. "I met him a couple of months ago." The corners of his mouth turned up in a goofy, star struck smile.

"You tell him about the robbery?" I couldn't help laughing at his embarrassment.

"I sent that guitar back to the Hard Rock Café anonymously." Miles scrubbed at his tired eyes. "But maybe I'll fess up over a couple of beers, who knows? You want to be the first to hear the new song? You were sort of half of what inspired me."

"I did?" I asked mystified. "Yeah, I'd love to hear it."

Fitting his fingers over the strings for the first chords, Miles played a mournful, but almost angry melody that spiraled around the lyrics, "I can't see you even when the sun is bright, it isn't darkness that hides you…." He frowned, changing a note before singing that line again and continuing with the melancholy song. Just after the now familiar bridge came the words that really got me; "I look right through you but all I see is me."

"Music--makes us invisible, it sets us apart, it lets us escape, but from the visible there is no escape. Hilda Dolittle," I quoted, my heart thumping wildly. The song was about invisibility, but it wasn't about me.

"That's perfect!" Miles smacked the music stand, sending papers fluttering to the ground. "Who's Hilda Dolittle?"

"Damned if I know. What's the name of that song?"

"Invisible." He grinned slyly. "What else?"

"Who else inspired that song? A woman?"

Bending over to pick up the scattered sheets, Miles' face was hidden from me. "I was engaged before I was arrested. Y'know I was sent up for armed robbery. I had the gun but the other guy had the rage. He beat the store owner almost to death." He tamped the papers into some semblance of order, placing them more carefully on the music stand. "Elizabeth said she'd wait for me. She'd been my high school sweetheart, all blond curls and lofty ambitions. I shoulda known she wouldn't carry a torch for somebody who'd been in prison, but I believed it, y'know? I wanted her to be there when I walked out, all loving and pretty."

 _God, did I know._ I'd longed for something like that too, but never even came close. Only people who'd wanted me around were the guys who slunk around in the evenings at shower time looking for a little action. I'd finally learned to accommodate their desires, but no one asked about mine.

"She came to a few conjugal visits, making me think I had a chance but she was justshining me on. After I got out she was already living with somebody else, but the worst of it was I found out she'd been pregnant but gotten rid of it."

"Aw, crap," I whispered. So I had been right, there was a woman before Farzimah, but she hadn't held a candle to the princess. "Man, I'm sorry."

"I had other friends, family, for support but songwriting was what really got me through it, and it was probably for the best, huh?" Miles blinked away what looked suspiciously like tears. "I'd never have met Far if I'd gotten married back then…Farzimah turned my whole life around."

"I get the feeling you did that all on your own, but she's one in a million, Miles. Cherish her."

"I do."

"You gonna sing 'Invisible' at the banquet?"

"I haven't quite decided, I'm not sure it's ready for public scrutiny." He doodled little circles and triangles in the corner of the paper. "I'm really dreading this all tomorrow. It started out as something I could give to Amahl--a send off, sort of, but it's turned all rotten inside."

"From what we're uncovering, it's more like Mike Kim and others used you to get close to Amahl and topple things from the inside, but it didn't work as planned."

"Do you have a clue about what's goin' down, Darien?" Miles shaded in one of the triangles with the edge of his pencil without looking at me, but I'd noticed he often asked the uncomfortable questions with a pretense of casual interest.

"You'll be the first to know, bro, believe me," I promised.

"The most important thing is keeping Farzimah and her family safe," Miles vowed. "Whatever happens, like on the Titanic…"

"Women and children first?" I made a face, "Okay, that's one image I wish you hadn't put in my head. Now all I see is the whole hotel sinking into the Pacific with ice bergs all around."

"When this is over, I'm gonna ask her to marry me." Miles looked haunted by all the memories he recreated in his songs. "This time I found happiness."

"I'll bet you a c-note she says yes."

"You're on."

"That guitar looks like it's been dragged through the mud and used as a pillow. You have that thing back in the joint?"

"It's my first and my favorite." He patted the scarred wooden instrument. "Everything sounds sweeter when she sings for me." He broke into the Beatles' song 'In my life' and the delicate bridge, once played by the Beatles on a harpsichord, was the sound of fairies and sprites dancing in enchanted forests. It was impossible that such an ugly old guitar could create such heavenly music, and for a minute or two I was ready to believe there really was magic and miracles in the world.

"In my life I've loved them all," Miles sang, and we both sat in the silence waiting for the spell to break before we went back to our normal life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You see her?" I asked, scanning the hordes of passengers streaming through the airport terminal.

In a goodwill effort, Farzimah and I had been drafted into meeting Sommatra and Mohammed Nazeem at the airport and escorting them to the hotel. I'd never really gotten to sleep since the late night jam session with Miles, and I was wasted. Miles had assured me he'd actually gotten forty winks before getting up to bedlam, but now it was mid afternoon and there was only a few hours left before D-day.

"She's hard to miss, Darien, big as an elephant in a chador," Farzimah grumped. She'd wanted to spend the day with Miles, but that hadn't been remotely possible so she was stuck with me. Or I was stuck with her, since for the first time ever, she wasn't very good company.

"Well, I see a guy who looks a little like Tayeb and a tall, slender girl dressed in your native costume." I could see over the heads of the crowd more easily that Farzimah could. "So put on your welcome face."

"That can't be her!" Farzimah exclaimed.

It was. What little I could really see of Sommatra was quite a bit smaller than a pachyderm, and tall enough to play woman's basketball. She even topped her brother by about half an inch, which probably didn't sit well with him. Sommatra must have been wearing contacts, unless Farzimah had been exaggerating about her eyesight, because she didn't bump into any obstacles, and looked me square in the eye when we shook hands.

Nazeem looked murderous, but Sommatra was obviously used to ignoring him and started in chatting with Farzimah the minute she had a chance. Farzimah played it cool for a few minutes but seemed to warm quickly to the other woman's enthusiasm, leaving me with the sulking older brother.

"You travel a lot for your work?" I asked politely, ushering them over to where Abdullah family guards were already collecting an impressive amount of baggage.

"What do you know about it?" he sneered.

"Amahl--uh--his Royal Highness told me you worked in the government. Foreign affairs, I think he said."

"I have dealings with many other countries. It's necessary to for the economy of my country since we export oil, but I don't have to like it," Mohammed Nazeem answered curtly, walking quickly to catch up to the others.

"I'm so excited to be here!" Sommatra gushed, peering around quickly before Mohammed practically shoved her into the limo.

"We won't be here long, I already told you," he said coldly. "We will go straight to our suite in the hotel so that my sister will have as little exposure as possible to infidels and sinful pursuits."

"I want to see Hollywood and Beverly Hills 90210." Sommatra ignored her brother's glower, claiming a window seat so she could see out as we drove away.

"I'm sure that could be arranged but that's over an hour away, up north," Farzimah sounded much happier than earlier. "San Diego is famous for the zoo and…"

"'Simon and Simon'!" Sommatra exclaimed, obviously a fan of one of the most famous TV series filmed in the city.

"Maybe we could have lunch tomorrow at the Hard Rock Café?"

"Oh, yes!" Sommatra cried.

"No," Nazeem proclaimed. "We are on a mission. If the crown prince--" he said the words with barely contained contempt, "upholds his end of the contract, and you are found agreeable in his eyes, you will be the future queen of Kharistan. Queens don't tour malls and rock and roll establishments."

"You're wrong there, pal," I joked, thinking of the word queen in a whole different connotation.

"I would prefer if your bodyguard would refrain from speaking to me," Nazeem spat, addressing Farzimah, probably because there weren't any other men of his station in the car. "His scent is stinking up the car."

"Listen…" I started, a flash of anger blazing through me. Who did this SOB think he was anyway? Farzimah laid a small hand on my arm, stopping any further breach of protocol. Wouldn't that be a kicker if I fucked up the whole marriage contract and maybe the assassination attempt before we even got to the hotel?

"First off, Darien is a family friend, not my bodyguard." Farzimah's voice was pure ice next to Nazeem's. "And I would ask you to keep a civil tongue in your mouth when speaking to me."

Farzimah might outrank him, royally at least, but she clearly didn't faze Nazeem. "I only speak to you, Princess, because I am compelled to since we share the same vehicle. Obviously you don't respect your superiors or the old, traditional ways, judging from your attire. I would prefer to speak only to your brother, instead he sends me foreigners and women to greet me. This just shows me what regard he holds me in, and I can only respond in kind."

"Ah, but sir, it is you who are the foreigner here," Farzimah said with a razor sharp edge. I don't know why I ever thought she was shy and retiring.

Sommatra's coal black eyes watched the argument from behind her covering veil, but I could see she wasn't siding with her brother. Maybe we had an ally in a most unlikely person.

Security was so tight at the hotel it took us half an hour to wade through the lobby, get the Nazeems their suite and ferry them upstairs in the designated elevator. Although, admittedly, some of that delay had to do with the semi-automatics Nazeem's bodyguards were packing. I saw Hobbes looking a bit envious when he spied the weapons. They finally made some agreement with the hotel management that the two guards could keep their smaller weapons if they put the Russian made rifles in the hotel safe.

I know I felt safer with the big guns locked up. I couldn't tell whether Mohammed Nazeem was impressed with the thoroughness of our security or angry at being detained and briefly searched. He just looked pissed off no matter what anybody did.

Leaving Farzimah in her own lavish suite adjacent to Miles', I headed back to the lobby hoping to find some food to fortify myself for the ordeal ahead. I really hate wearing a tux and just thinking about all the studs and starched collars was already making me sweat. Not to mention that we still knew diddly-squat about how the danger would manifest itself.

"Nazeem's a real prize, ain't he?" Hobbes remarked, leaning against the ornate carved grand staircase that led up to the second floor.

"He took exception to me even bein' in the car with him," I grumbled. "Anywhere to get food around here?"

"Fawkes, the hotel has four separate restaurants and a bar, take your pick."

"I mean real food--simple, like nachos or a burger that doesn't cost nine bucks."

"Ah, then allow me." Hobbes led the way out back where the delivery trucks were parked. The hotel's service staff was clustered around a silver-sided 'roach coach' munching on sandwiches and steaming bowls of soup. Only five bucks later, I had a big bowl of chili and a cardboard container of crispy chips smothered in spicy cheese sauce. An icy red can of Coca-Cola was the perfect accompaniment to such a meal.

Bobby and I settled on the loading dock with our lunch around us, both filling our bellies before either of us spoke. It was a gorgeous day, the wind off the ocean was sweet and salty, and it was all I could do not to chuck the whole problem into Hobbes' lap and go lie in the sun. Even from this less than desirable side of the hotel, the view of the ocean was incredible, and the Del Coronado hotel gleamed like a jewel out on the island just across the water.

"Any updates on the 'situation'?" I wiped my fingers on about half a dozen napkins to clean up the tomato and cheese. "And whatever happened about Tayeb's fireworks? Y'know that kid is an electrical engineer. How hard would it be for him to rig a bomb?"

"Fawkes," Hobbes warned, jerking his head in the direction of the small group of people still finishing their lunches. "Tayeb's been under surveillance since the first day we met him at the mall. We always suspected he had ties higher up and man, first impressions pay off, huh? Cousin to the minister of Foreign Affairs…"

"So is there enough to implicate…?"

"Not a drop. He and Amin did exactly what they said they were going to do on Wednesday. My guys said they bought the supplies to make fireworks and did. Since it was easy enough to dissuade him from the whole pyrotechnics idea, especially in lieu of the fact that he really would have needed a city permit, obviously that wasn't an important part of the overall plan."

"Maybe it was meant as a distraction?"

"I don't think so. I'm still bettin' that the real action happens during the meal--when the KFF can completely discredit the royal family and maybe get as many of their supporters as possible killed at the same time. Your idea of malicious rumors about Amahl was dead on. CIA reports there are already posters all over the capital city Qwill'ran calling Amahl anti-Kharistani and implying he's sidin' with Bush on all that mess with bin Laden."

"You're tradin' secrets with the CIA?" I asked, impressed.

"Still know a couple of spooks on the inside." He shrugged semi-modestly. "Well, back to friskin' down the upper crust of San Diego society. Y'know we already found one well-heeled dame packing a semi-automatic in her handbag? Smallest one I've ever seen. We arrested one guy who runs a computer company because he was carrying six concealed weapons. Six!"

Bobby's boasting kind of depressed me. What's the world coming too when average citizens deck themselves out like guerilla militia out on a commando run?

As much as I would have liked to be the fly on the wall during the contract negotiations between Nazeem and Amahl, there are certain delicate meetings even the Invisible Man doesn't eavesdrop on. Whatever occurred, in the end, Nazeem exited with a scowl and abrupt words to his guards standing outside the door.

Sommatra and Farzimah spent the time getting chummy, and I didn't listen in there either, mostly because, as much as I like a good discussion over the relative merits of hair gel over mousse, chats about birth control and who was hotter--Ewan MacGregor or Ben Affleck, left me cold. Okay, so I played invisible wallflower for a little while before I left.

Sommatra may have been confined to what amounted to a harem most of her life but she'd used the time to bone up on everything American, much to her brother's disgust, no doubt. She knew more about US TV than I did, and had a DVD, a satellite dish on her television, and Internet connection on her computer. She was a walking, talking Kharistani version of a valley girl. She also admitted to having slimmed down in her late teens after growing four inches in a single year, and bought clothes from the Gap and Victoria's Secret on-line. There are no international borders any more.

By seven p.m., Hobbes was as tense as I've even seen him and I wasn't far behind in that regard. We had no real concrete evidence in the conspiracy beyond the connections we'd uncovered in our major players. Despite bomb sniffing dogs and security even the national airport couldn't muster, we hadn't discovered any weapons of mass destruction.

The only weird development of the whole day was a macabre delivery containing two coffins marked with Miles and Farzimah's names. San Diego police and every other law enforcement agency in the area swarmed all over the long narrow boxes, ripping out the satin linings and dismantling the coffins to ferret out any danger. There wasn't anything. It was so damned frustrating.

There was nothing else to do but go forward. Maybe we'd all made a colossal mistake--the black roses and coffins were somebody's idea of a particularly bad joke, and Melissa Beatten's death was just a sorry footnote in Miles Verbage's future biography. I actually sort of wanted to believe that. It would've made life so much simpler.

The banquet room had been festooned with flowers of every sort, except black roses, and when I walked into the room I was almost knocked out by the heady floral perfume. Lilies, jonquils, tulips, bird of paradise and every sort of orchid you could imagine were splayed out in huge bouquets. It was like standing in the back of a florist's shop, and the cynic in me wondered if that could throw off the scent for a drug or bomb-sniffing dog? I had no answer to that one, just a random thought bouncing through my skull.

Three walls of the room were decorated with huge photos of Kharistan and its people. One picture showed the former king, Amahl the first, surrounded by his wife, dressed in a chador, and the four children. Somber Amahl, who had to be less than eight, since that was when his father was killed, Addis, the brother who had died perhaps mysteriously, pretty little Farzimah wearing a cute pink dress and black patent leather shoes since she was too young to be hidden away from male eyes, and toddler Amin. I was afraid the whole family could be wiped out by the end of the night, and even though I'd done my level best to make this evening a success, I already felt a failure. We hadn't uncovered the sinister plot and brought Snidley Whiplash to justice before the last reel, like Dudley Do-right always did. Miles had trusted me and I felt like I'd let him down, even though nothing had happened yet.

Two flags were mounted behind the main table, the Stars and Stripes and a deep blue banner with a flying eagle. The eagle had a wingspan that encompassed the entire width of the flag and was replicated exactly in the beautiful centerpiece Mrs. Lee had crafted. It was the first time I'd seen the statue since it was uncrated and placed on display, and I walked carefully around it, admiring the artist's work. The eyes had an almost lifelike quality, and peered intently downward as if searching the countryside for threat.

In the center of the room was a tiny stage where Miles would be performing, with the diners ringed all around him. Everything looked perfect and nothing had been left to chance, but I was scared down deep and the dread wouldn't leave.

The only way to fight that kind of pervasive depression is to find someone upbeat and try to soak up their optimism. I rode the elevator to the private, guarded floor where all the major participants in tonight's little passion play were housed and knocked on room number 759.

"Who is it?" a giggly voice asked.

"Darien Fawkes," I identified myself and when Sommatra peered through the door at me I grumbled, "Who's supposed to be guarding this door?"

"You?" Sommatra cocked her head, opening the door wider so I could come in. She was dressed in a chador, but as Farzimah had told me was the current custom, had it open down the front, and without the veil on she appeared to be wearing a long coat like an old gunslinger. Underneath, she had on a canary yellow lace dress over a paler yellow satin gown. The color suited her burnished brown skin tone, giving her a glow. She wasn't as pretty as Farzimah by half, but if Amahl had decided to make her his bride, she'd proven to be a sweet, funny girl with a broad, affable face and lively dark eyes.

"I thought Mountain Man--uh--Avraham was supposed to be here."

"He went down the hall for some sodas," Sommatra answered in her oddly inflected English. She'd focused her study of the language on the version spoken by the 'Brady Bunch' and the 'Partridge Family'. "The place is crawling with guards, don't get your knickers in a twist."

Okay, she obviously divided her time between American and British TV. The only other person I'd ever heard use that particular expression was Claire.

"You ladies about ready? Cause we're supposed to make an appearance on the main floor in half an hour," I informed her.

Avraham came back in just then, handing out cold cans of root beer and Seven-up, and I appropriated one. He'd also found the day's issue of Variety magazine for Farzimah, who bustled out in chador-over-ball gown to grab it up.

"I want to check the charts, sales for 'Sandstorm' and 'Empty Rooms' have been phenomenal since Miles' publicity blast," she said, flipping through the pages, "Hi, Darien, you look great in a tux."

"Thanks, I feel like a penguin," I groused, sipping soda. Just swallowing was more difficult with the constricting starched collar and jaunty black bow tie.

"Miles!" Farzimah called, and the Mighty One himself came through the connecting door from his suite, still fumbling with his formal wear. "'Sandstorm' is still at number one and 'Empty Rooms' went to the top twenty in less than a week," Farzimah said, folding back the correct page so he could see the list.

"We're riding high, baby." He kissed her on the mouth in front of a swooning Sommatra.

"Miles!" Farzimah admonished with a giggle, dropping the paper. "I have to suit up, become the princess. My mother expects it. None of that for the rest of the night."

"I feel like I'm back home," Sommatra grumbled, watching her friend adjust the heavy gold mesh veil over her black hair and hook the attached veil into place. Sommatra's chador was a more conventional fabric one, but it was still quite elegant, adorned with tiny mirrors embroidered all around the hem and on the stitching around the eyeholes.

Sherida took a round of photographs to commemorate the start of the evening, and very soon we were at the point of no return. Flanked by enough guards to keep the Hope Diamond safe, we sallied forth.

Mrs. Abdullah came along on the future king's arm. She was swathed in a concealing chador that had yards more fabric than either of the younger girls', and it was jet black, decorated with tiny black beads around the sleeves but I could see her lively eyes watching everything with an excited air. She wore as many rings on her fingers as her future son-in-law, who greeted her with a courtly little bow. No wonder he had managed the impossible, wresting Farzimah away from the family bosom. He knew when to kowtow to the queen.

Quite a crowd had already gathered in the banquet room by the time the royal party had assembled and made their grand entrance, so we were met with a warm round of applause. I felt like a fraud, acting like some James Bond wanna-be guarding the beautiful princess and her consort when all the while I was sure that the maniacal bad guy with the weapon that would enable him to take over the world was just behind the screen waiting for me to slip up.

Hobbes, on the other hand, seemed to have hit his stride and looked calm and in control. Or maybe he just faked it better than I did.

Because Kharistan is a Muslim country, no alcohol was served at the bar, but the fruit punch and soft drinks were flowing like water and the festive crowd was looking forward to hearing Miles sing. I hovered just outside the group around Farzimah at all times, bisecting with Bobby's orbit around Mighty Mouse. Apparently older woman like blond haired rock stars, evidenced by the well-heeled fans he'd attracted. I even recognized a short, dark haired Attorney General of the United States.

The party really had drawn an impressive guest list from all walks of life. There were government and royal visitors from other countries, wealthy patrons of the arts and quite a number of well-known movie, TV and singing stars. Sommatra was walking around in a daze, trailed by her lurking bodyguard. He was unable to stop her from getting Gwenneth Paltrow and Arnold Swartzenagger's autographs, but did manage to frighten off some fat little potentate from one of Kharistan's neighboring countries with a snarling growl.

I was kind of hoping maybe Mira Sorvino showed up, but apparently she must have been busy filming some new movie. I did see her dad, though.

"Darien!" Claire bustled up to me, and I do mean bustled. She had on a pink satin dress with the skirt bundled up in the back into one of the strange old-fashioned styles called a bustle. I'm not sure how she could sit down comfortably in it, but the front of the skirt hugged tightly over her waist and hips giving her a knock-out figure. The top of the dress was cut in a heart shape that curved over her breasts without any visible means of support. Since I was so tall, I suddenly found myself staring straight down into her cleavage with a very dry throat.

 _She's Hobbes' girl, she's Hobbes' girl._

"Darien!" Claire enunciated louder over the din of the crowd.

I grabbed a cup of punch from a circulating waiter and downed the entire contents. It was a little too sticky sweet for my taste, but at least I had moisture back in my mouth again. "Claire?" I said to prove I'd heard her.

"Look over there!" she nudged me with her arm. Across the room was Paul McCartney, talking to my former prison mate. "It's Paul!"

"Now I'm impressed," I admitted. Not often you get to sit down to dinner with a Beatle, especially since there are so few of them left.

"I think I'm having heart palpitations," Claire said faintly, fanning herself.

"Don't let Hobbes hear you say that, he may get jealous," I teased because I knew it was expected of me but my heart wasn't in it. What if the assassins did their worst? A bomb? Food poisoning? What had we overlooked in our zeal to uncover the plot? There had to be something we'd missed.

"Let's walk over there, maybe I could shake his hand," Claire urged.

I glanced over at Farzimah, who was standing in a group of veiled countrywomen, looking, on the whole, bored. After all, I wasn't supposed to stray far from her. "Go on over, Hobbes probably already got Paul into a conversation over who's better--Elvis or John Lennon," I told Claire, noticing that Mrs. Abdullah was whispering into her daughter's ear. Maybe things were about to get started.

I was right because only a minute or so later a voice boomed from the hidden sound system. "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Crown Prince of Kharistan, Amahl Abdullah,"

"Thank you so much for coming tonight." Amahl, dressed in flowing white robes decorated in gold trim, held up his hands in welcome as he stood next to the great eagle statue. Two figureheads of the country, together in one frame of a picture. Several camera flashes went off at once capturing this historic event for posterity. "I told my mother I wanted a small birthday party, but she insisted on inviting one hundred or so of my closest friends."

Hearty laughter greeted this comment as the assemblage settled into their seats. I found myself at the far end of the royal table, standing practically out of sight behind the drape of a curtain that hid the entrance to the kitchen.

Waiters were already bringing out salads and water glasses, pushing past me with their huge trays, and I had a momentary flashback to the night of the shooting. This time, we'd specifically banned guns in the room on everyone, including bodyguards. Only those stationed outside the now closed doors were armed. Even Hobbes had agreed that was the safest way.

"May I introduce my mother, the Queen of Kharistan in exile, Challoor, and my brother Prince Amin." Amahl pointed to each family member, "Next my sister, Princess Farzimah, and last, but certainly not least in my favor, my bride-to-be…"

A gasp came up from the crowd as Sommatra stood with her head slightly downcast in difference to her future husband and king. "Her brother and I spoke earlier this afternoon and the union which was proposed by our fathers at Sommatra's birth has been solidified. When I fly back to Kharistan tomorrow, Sommatra will accompany me and we will be wed in Qwill'ran."

This was obviously joyful news to some of the Kharistani present, who clapped and banged on the table in celebration.

Miles was sitting at a table just opposite the royal table so that he and Farzimah were almost facing each other. He smiled happily at her, no doubt thinking that with big brother's matrimony a done deal, it wouldn't be hard to slip another wedding in behind with less fanfare.

However, Mike Kim, sitting to his left, looked downright dour. Not too far away, at the next table, Mohammed Nazeem sneered, then glanced over at Miles' business manager. The exchanged glances were too fraught with meaning to be just accidental, and I knew immediately they were acquainted.

 _Bingo_ , another link in the chain. If only we knew what the chain was attached to.

As the meal progressed, different people got up to express birthday wishes to the Crown Prince. American support for Kharistan was pledged, one A-list director promised that his next movie would be made there, and Miles gave Amahl one of those giant checks just perfect for a photo op made out in the amount of $100,000 for illiterate Kharistani girls.

Last to speak was Farzimah who followed up the pledge for education with a vow to bring the women of her country in line with the 21st century and to completely do away with concealing garb all together. So saying, she put her hand to her face veil, glancing over at Sommatra at the same time.

So that was what they were discussing all afternoon between girl talk.

At exactly the same time, each lady unhooked the cover over her nose and mouth, pushed back the head shawl and slipped the chadors off their shoulders. Miles' band, stuck back into a corner behind some potted palms, struck up a rock and roll beat as the lead bass player began to sing, "I wish they all could be Kharistani girls…."

Although a few of the older male Kharistanis, including Nazeem, looked shocked and even angry, most of the women seemed to accept this new liberal stance and many at least took off their face veils but left their heads covered. One girl, who barely looked old enough to qualify as marriageable age, an Abdullah cousin, I think, did remove her cover gown, too.

Amahl smiled broadly at his sister's panache and held out his hand to lead her to the dance floor for a first dance--a waltz, showing just how liberal they really were. Probably back home, guys danced with guys and the women ate in a different room.

The true reason Farzimah had gotten her henna design all the way down in the small of her back was finally revealed. Her dress, while tame, I'm sure by Hollywood standards, plunged down nearly to her waist, letting the delicate tracings of flowers and vines peek out for all to see. The gown, made of violet chiffon embroidered with the same Kharistani style stitching featured on most chadors, had long sleeves and from the front a sedate neckline, was a big hit and all the other women looked positively jealous.

Pretty soon, only a fraction of the guests were still seated since most had joined the royal family on the dance floor. Miles cut in to make time with his girl, so Amahl danced with his future wife. Sommatra looked like she was in heaven. Her brother did not.

The music changed to a faster song as Miles led Farzimah off the floor towards me. "Darien, could you take my chador up to the room and lock it into the trunk?" Farzimah asked. "The thing is way too valuable to leave lying about and I'm not wearing it a second longer tonight."

"You've got a lot of moxie to do that in front of all those people, Farzimah," I said with admiration.

"My belly was churning, but I feel very strongly that to make our way in the world, women must be unfettered. It doesn't make me less religious or…"

"Far, I think he heard your speech already." Miles winked.

"I've got to tell Hobbes I'm leaving," I started, but the man was suddenly right beside me.

"I heard you, and I've got my cell phone on vibrator in case you need to get in touch," Hobbes patted his hip. "How much time before you sing, Verbage?"

"Pretty soon, just let everybody have some fun on the dance floor and I'll sing when the birthday cake comes out," Miles answered. "This night is going fantastic, I can't believe our luck. Man, I knew hiring you two was the best idea I ever had."

"Even those Freedom Fighters barely showed themselves," Farzimah agreed.

"Oh, they're out there," Hobbes said. "We just made sure they had to stay off hotel property, which forced them across the street and out of the way of the limos comin' in. But the news vans got lots of protest footage."

"Well, anyway, everything's rad. I couldn't have dreamed up a better party." Miles pushed back a hank of blond hair that kept falling over his forehead. I suspected that his hair stylist had intentionally cut it that way.

"Don't close the barn door before the cows come in," Hobbes said cryptically. He scooped up Farzimah's chador, his eyes widening when the weight of the thing registered and dumped it into my arms. "Get back here as quick as you can, Fawkes, I gotta feeling things are gonna go sour real soon."

"Your spider sense tingling?" I shifted the gown over my shoulder, draping the chain mail helmet over one arm.

"Yeah, and Commissioner Gordon is flashing the bat signal in the sky as we speak," Hobbes shuddered, glancing over to where Claire was dancing with Paul McCartney. "Something smells hinky."

"Holy oleo Batman, is that your professional opinion?" I quipped, but I felt it, too. Everything had gone too smoothly, it was like the quiet before a storm. Hobbes made a face at me but his eyes were back to tracking the princess and her rock star.

Going out the main double doors, I passed several people exiting for a smoke break, including Nazeem. He looked downright surly when one of the guards pointed out that there was no smoking inside the building and he'd have to join the rest of the cancer stick society out on the crowded patio.

I had no problem tucking the chador away in its specially made trunk and was just about to leave the luxury suite when the Variety Farzimah had dropped earlier caught my eye. The paper had fallen open on the coffee table with the headline 'Smashing CDs Abound' face upwards. At first, I assumed the article was about the group Smashmouth who'd done a cover of the Monkees' old hit for 'Shrek,' but on closer inspection I saw Miles' name in the first paragraph. Smashing CDs?

Snatching the paper up, I scanned the text shaking my head in astonishment. Girls in New York who'd been in Rosie O'Donnell's audience were reporting that whenever they played the advance copies of 'Sandstorm special edition' their small glass knick-knacks spontaneously shattered.

My breath caught in my throat. It was just like that little perfume bottle Sherida had shown me the day Miles recorded the alternate ending to the song.

 _Crap_.

Mike Kim had suggested that Miles include the new chords specifically for Amahl's birthday and sing the amended version of the song at the banquet. And some strange combination of tones caused glass to break. Not window glass--because that had remained intact in the recording studio, and the Variety article didn't mention anything of the sort. But the chords seemed to break the pretty little things girls collect; small hand blown horses, perfume bottles, art glass. Just like the Kharistan eagle gracing the royal table downstairs.

A bomb. Somehow a bomb had been imbedded into the statue. Once Miles began to sing, there was barely three minutes before the eerie chords. Then the eagle would explode sending lethal glass shards in every direction like shrapnel from a landmine. It would kill every person in close proximity.

My heart pounding like a jackhammer, I raced down the hall, smacking the elevator button with impatience. As I slipped between the barely open doors, I dialed my cell phone one handed and hit the lobby button at the same time. "C'mon, c'mon, Hobbes, pick up," I chanted, barely able to keep my visible form with so many distractions spiraling up my adrenaline.

"Fawkes?" Hobbes answered, instantly on the alert.

"Hobbes!" I yelled into the tiny receiver, "Don't let Miles start singing. There's a bomb in the eagle centerpiece!"

"What?"

"The chords at the end of the song will activate the eagle to explode," I explained, not going into the specifics. "Just don't let him sing."

"The band already started to play," Hobbes groaned.

I could hear the tinny notes over my cell as the elevator doors opened wide. A bellhop with one of those huge carts full of luggage blocked my way and I had to shove him aside to race across the lobby. He yelled curses after me as I sprinted down the main hallway.

The banquet hall was in an uproar, people surging for the doors as I ran up. Feeling akin to a salmon swimming upstream, I muscled my way through the throng, trying to center myself on Hobbes. The band had obviously stopped playing, since they'd abandoned their instruments in favor of crowding around Miles and Amahl. Everybody was shouting at once with lots of gesturing going on.

"Darien, what's going on?" Miles asked, his voice remarkably steady for somebody who looked halfway to panic-ville.

"Hobbes said there's a bomb? This is incredible!" Amahl cried.

"I can't explain completely, but we're not in immediate danger as long as you don't sing 'Sandstorm'," I said to Miles, spotting Hobbes examining the eagle. "Those weird chords Mike Kim had you add at the end are some kind of trigger. Amahl, I'd get your family out of the hotel just as quickly as possible, just in case."

As I spoke, music started playing over the sound system, a song so familiar all of us blanched.

"That's the CD, who…?" Miles started.

"Grab Farzimah, Sommatra, your mother and get out of here!" I insisted. Amahl wasn't a king in training for nothing, he knew when to listen to advisors. Grabbing the women, he started hustling them to the door, Mountain Man and Amin directly behind them.

"Fawkes, I don't see any wires or a way of disarming this thing!" Hobbes exclaimed. Claire stood resolutely next to him, ready for anything, bless her heart. I wasn't about to let either one of them get hurt, if I had a say in the matter. I was the one with my own private time bomb ticking away in the back of my head, and by my way of thinking, that made me expendable.

"The bomb musta been sealed inside, there's probably no way to switch it off. We got a little over two minutes by my reckoning before this thing blows." I didn't waste any time. Lunging across the table I picked up the eagle, surprised to find it wasn't as heavy as I'd remembered it to be. Mrs. Lee must have weighted the box to make us think it was made of thick, tempered glass when in fact it was light enough for me to run with, and I did. "Hobbes, find Kim and Nazeem!" I yelled back, cloaking myself in Quicksilver. "And turn off the music!"

The question was, where to go? Already, the song was flowing into the second refrain, the guitar sobbing with passion as it swelled before the next chorus. I had to move, and now. At least if I made it outside the building the music, and especially the fatal chords, wouldn't be audible and I could dispose of the eagle safely. Maybe into the ocean?

Running in the direction the waiters had come when serving the meal, I found myself in a long, gleaming kitchen. There must be a back door, a garbage deposit somewhere? The music continued to play, eerie and surreal, even though I'd left the banquet hall behind. The bastard had hooked into the main speakers for the whole hotel and there was little likelihood I'd escape being blown to smithereens when the song ended.

In a contrary sort of way, I kind of liked the idea of going out with a bang. It was a fitting end to a wild ride of a life. I'd had plenty of downs and this would be one hell of an up note to end on, pun intended. Claire had said the gland would probably kill me, but this way, I'd die before than ignominious end. Instead, I'd be a national hero, the savior of an entire royal family. Darien Fawkes, ex-thief, and martyr to the cause of democracy. It had a nice ring to it.

My lungs were killing me, oxygen stores depleting as I ran faster than I'd ever run in my life. I knew 'Sandstorm' too well, I'd heard it endlessly for the last two weeks. Now every quarter note, every hemi-demi-semi-quaver sounded my death knoll, but I kept running. The passage to the garbage area was open, and I burst out into the open, near the loading dock where Hobbes and I had eaten lunch.

Remarkably, I could still hear the damned music, the last few lyrics strung out on a long note before the coda. With a mighty heave, I tossed the eagle into a dumpster, pushing it down the macadam that sloped into the bay. Strange alien chords filled the air at the same moment. They were the last thing I heard.

The explosion slammed me backwards with the force of a hurricane. I landed sprawled against the loading dock but didn't stay conscious long enough to see the remarkable ocean waves caused by the blast which was caught on camera by an amateur videographer trying to get footage of the Del Coronado lights from his hotel window.

"Darien? Can you hear me?"

Claire's face appeared in front of me, all misty and indistinct, but I recognized her blond hair, now straggling out of the sweet little French Twist she'd worn for the party, and her pink gown was streaked with something red. I closed my eyes before trying to figure out what that might be. "Darien?" she repeated louder.

That time I heard it more clearly, but like an instant replay of two weeks ago, my hearing was dampened so much I wondered who'd given me earplugs.

"Ever'body okay?" I slurred, except I could barely hear my own voice and my neck didn't want to support my head when I tried to sit up.

"Stay down, partner," Hobbes smiled at me. I watched his lips, fascinated that I'd known what he was saying even though I couldn't make out the sound.

So, once again, I managed to get a head injury while the rest of the group remained undamaged. And this time nobody died, for which I was supremely grateful. Someday I was going to go up to San Francisco to put flowers on Melissa Beatten's grave. And maybe my signed 'Sandstorm' t-shirt. She'd probably like that.

Turns out Nazeem and Kim tried to get away, but when one of the terrified banquet patrons called '911' on his cell, that deployed emergency teams straight to the hotel. And any hotel immediately gets enough fire trucks to deal with a three-alarm fire. What with all the news vans already there, the limos, and then ten zillion hook and ladder trucks and paramedic vans, there was no outlet for Kim's BMW. Poor guy just couldn't flee the scene of the crime.

When he realized we were on to the bomb, he'd used his knowledge of sound systems to put the special edition CD on a continuous loop so that it wouldn't stop playing until one of the hotel staff had to shut down the entire mechanism. Luckily, I'd known the length of the song so intimately or I probably would have ended up sliced, diced and pureed.

Nazeem immediately denied culpability and claimed diplomatic immunity, but that doesn't really hold up in any court when you've tried to kill the Crown Prince and he knows about it. Amahl granted the U.S. government free rein to throw the book at Mohammed Nazeem for attempted murder. Then, of course, there was the little matter of high treason and a host of other charges so numerous they put my own rap sheet to shame.

Sommatra was so mortified by her brother's actions she begged to be let out of the marriage contract, but that only endeared her to Amahl. He insisted he wanted to marry her anyway.

Nazeem's cousin Tayeb blabbed his head off when confronted with his own list of charges, in exchange for immunity. I think the U.S. decided to deport him regardless. He'd made the bomb, as I'd suspected, and Mike Kim had recruited Mrs. Lee to seal the ingenious device inside the eagle. The bomb had to be able to withstand the heat of the glass blowing without going off inadvertently. Only the right combination of musical tones could shatter the glass and set off the triggering device inside. Members of the Kharistan Freedom Fighters had mathematically formulated those exact notes and scored them into 'Sandstorm' with precision.

I couldn't fathom someone cold-bloodedly calculating the deadly music to orchestrate another person's death. What ghastly things are done in the name of power. Because that's all that it boiled down to, the greedy desire for power. Mohammed Nazeem refused to let go of the old ways, and to that end he'd sided with North Korean extremists. They'd stroked his ego, promising that if he could wrench power out of the Abdullah hands, he could become president or dictator or what ever the hell he wanted to be while they swiftly siphoned off every drop of oil in the country. He'd probably dreamed of being some fat old sultan with fifty wives all kneeling at his feet while he sat up on a throne made of gold. Too bad he ended up in a federal holding cell, awaiting trial.

Without any direction, the Kharistan Freedom Fighters put down their placards, folded their tents and slipped into the night. San Diego Police rounded up about half a dozen and the Berkeley Police found a few more but they were just the followers, not the big wigs, and we may never know who really started up the organization.

Jin Park and Kim's brother disappeared. The name Jade Song was an alias or maybe she never even existed at all, just a fictional name to put on a credit card. In any case, it's in the Fed's hands now, and I wanted nothing more to do with the case.

My head wound kept me in bed for two days since every time I tried to get up the floor tilted like one of those cheap rides at a fly-by-night carnival. Hobbes and Claire catered to my every wish until I wished them out of my apartment so I could get some rest. Hearing took a little longer than that to return since the blast had ruptured both my eardrums, but time heals all wounds, as they say.

I was the hero of the hour, having saved a king and ultimately his country, but fame is fleeting and by the time I could hear well enough to go on 'The View' and 'Today,' there was some other international crisis to knock my exploits off the front page.

Ah well, 'Entertainment Tonight' did interview me, but that was more because I'd saved Miles Verbage's life than Amahl's. And that was only because Miles wasn't around. He and Farzimah were staying at an undisclosed house somewhere out in the ocean.

 _Undisclosed?_ Well, yeah, Jimmy Buffett and me knew where they were, but we weren't talkin'. Miles did put out a public statement saying that the distribution company would recall all copies of 'Sandstorm special edition' and refund them with a new CD he'd be putting out in one month. A second version of 'Sandstorm' would be recorded without the terrible chords on the end along with some new tracks. Oh, and he personally sent each and every member of Rosie O'Donnell's audience a tiny hand blown glass eagle. Funny guy, Miles.

About ten days after Crown Prince Amahl's birthday party, I was reading in the International news section about the wedding of King Amahl to Sommatra Nazeem, newly crowned queen of Kharistan, when Hobbes sailed into the Keep with a large envelope.

"Fawkesy," he called waving the package at me. "You've got mail."

"When'd you go postal, Bobby?" I asked, folding up the newspaper.

"Nevermind that," he groaned. "Eberts gave it to me. Looks like it's from the Caribbean."

"Oh, yes, look at those lovely fish on the stamps." Claire peered over my shoulder.

Things never changed, it was time for yet another fasting blood sugar test. I'm still not clear on why my getting shot or concussed should necessitate drawing off vast quantities of my precious vital fluids, but I've decided not to fight it so much. I'm still alive, which is a pretty major accomplishment these days, and if Claire wants to try and keep me that way, I'm all for it. Nearly dying can really do a 360 on a guy's attitude towards life.

"Open it up," Hobbes urged.

Ripping open the envelope, I pulled out a CD jewel box and a short letter from my friend.

 _"Darien, here's a mock-up of my new CD. 'Invisible' is the title track. None of this would have happened if you hadn't come through in a major way. It's impossible to ever give you full credit for saving everyone's lives, dude. Since I couldn't quite put your name on the liner notes, in your line of business being invisible is kind of redundant, huh? Check out the cover picture, kind of my tribute to you. Oh, and the back cover's Far's way of asking it you'll stand up for us at the wedding. Miles"_

The front cover featured a picture of the charismatic blond rock star standing ankle deep in the ocean, light from the huge full moon seeming to cast a silvery glow over the man's body so that you could almost imagine he was disappearing right before your eyes.

"He caught it just right." Hobbes whistled in admiration. "You probably don't get to see it, Fawkes, but that's it. That's the look just before you go see-through."

"It's brilliant," Claire agreed. "Have you heard this new song? Play it."

I handed over the CD, rainbows glinting off the bottom, while flipping over the little plastic case. On the back was a picture of Miles and Farzimah walking away from the camera. He was in shorts and a blue Hawaiian shirt. She was in a red hibiscus print sarong. They'd swung their linked hands back, the camera catching them at the highest arc of the swing and there, glinting on Farzimah's hand, was a diamond and ruby encrusted engagement ring.

'Invisible' soared out of the speakers hidden behind Claire's fish tanks, but the tone of the song had changed since I'd first heard it. The beginning still mourned the pain of not being truly seen by a lover but in the end the singer had found a new romance and understood that he would never be invisible ever again.

It was a good tune. I'd give it a nine, Dick Clark, and predict it'll go right up the charts to number one. Can't be invisible when you're on the top of the heap.

I've been on top and I've been buried so far under crap I couldn't breathe. Personally I liked being right in the middle, but sometimes being able to go invisible had its own rewards.

FIN


End file.
